


Le Petit Prince

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [8]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:10:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5477516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The riveting conclusion of the d'Artagnan Romances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marie_Michon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_Michon/gifts), [Deiseach](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Deiseach), [OneforAll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneforAll/gifts), [Favourite_alias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Favourite_alias/gifts), [Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/gifts), [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



> Use with discretion:
> 
>  

**Vannes, July 1660**

His Excellency, the Bishop of Vannes slid off my cock, boneless and spent, and collapsed onto the damp, tangled sheets of his magnificent four post bed.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, eyes still shut, chest heaving from earlier exertions. “Tell me again how you did it.”

I smiled smugly and pulled his body closer to my own again, letting my fingers trail over his long limbs. He smelled of expensive perfumes and church incense, a strange effluvium which mixed in a complementary way with the fresher odors of our copulation.

“Do you know what they’re calling it?” Aramis grinned up at me, his eyes creasing in mirth. “‘A divinely ordained miracle’, Athos. _Divinely ordained_.”

“Well,” I picked up his hand and sucked two of his fingers into my mouth, letting my teeth bite at the soft pads of his digits, “They’re not wrong.”

“How did you know where all that gold was buried?”

“The King told me before he was executed, remember?”

“Yes, but… not in any amount of detail. And I do _remember_. I was there!”

I grinned down at him and kissed the hollow of his throat. I had already told Aramis about having achieved the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England in quite sufficient detail, but the curious kitten wanted to know more, his mind cataloguing this new information for some long term nefarious purpose, no doubt.

“My sweet honeysuckle, by now you should know that sometimes I just… know things.”

“Because your nudist family sends you visions,” he huffed with disdain.

“Don’t be jealous, chyortik, that I have a direct line to a great number of divinities, while you can pray to your One God until you’re blue in your beautiful face and see nary a burning bush.” I buried my nose in his neck and nipped at his skin with my teeth. He must have been too thoroughly pleasured to put up much of a protest.

“And _d’Artagnan_ ,” he went on, becoming suddenly reanimated. “He was there too?”

“I told you - he nearly got me burned to a crisp by kidnapping General Monck, whose suspicious disappearance the English blamed on me.”

“I still cannot believe he stood right next to you, and did not recognize you!” my demon laughed and wrapped his arms and legs around me again, rolling us both until he sat astride me, vigor seemingly restored. “Were you wearing a very big cloak, count?”

“No, Your Excellency,” I replied, slapping his behind and enjoying the resultant moan that escaped his lips. “I was cloakless, in fact. Purposefully, so that Monck could see I was unarmed. But I did speak English, so between that and the darkness, I must have been unrecognizable.”

“Cloakless, and with your chest exposed,” he taunted me, nails scraping down my chest as he spoke. “You could not resist flashing your nipples at Monck, admit it.”

“Oh? Should we speak of exposing ourselves, my love? What did _you_ expose to get appointed bishop of the diocese of Vannes? It’s several steps above Melun, and so proximal to Belle-Île.”

“Nicolas is a dear friend of mine,” Aramis rolled his eyes and attempted to dislodge himself off me. I held on.

“I too was a very dear friend of yours, once, Aramis. And it’s ‘Nicolas’ now? Not Superintendent Fouquet?”

“And now you’re jealous? Gallivanting around Albion, with your human pet, who nearly got you burned to a cinder, of your own admission!” He kissed me, sucking my lower lip into his mouth until I felt the points of his teeth against my flesh and moaned against him.

“Fire can’t kill me,” I gasped as his hands pressed me firmly into the mattress.

“Lucky you, sir.” His eyebrows furrowed and his face lost the expression of playfulness. He hovered over me, his hair spilling down over both our faces and I brushed it back, so that I could better see his eyes. “Still, you could have told me. I would have come with you.”

"Chyortik hates sea travel,” I reminded him, “and besides... you were busy 'reinforcing Belle-Île' for your dear friend Nicolas." My hand grasped for his cock, not surprised to find him almost fully hard again, and he laughed into my opened mouth.

As the years passed, we seemed to have found that right balance between having too much and not enough. We saw each other regularly, but neither of us lingered in the other’s shadow for longer than a few weeks. Was absence needed to make hearts grow fonder? Not at all. But it did make each reunion a bit sweeter, I had to admit. He was mine and I his - an axiom neither of us questioned, regardless of incidental plans and ambitions that wove through our lives like a very robust vine.

Aramis wanted to be Pope and I had to wait for Charles Stuart’s son to prove himself worthy of his father’s crown. All I had to do was bide my time. I did write my memoirs, while Aramis teased and told me to leave the “outré parts” out. I told him that would be disingenuous, but he explained to me that lies of omission aren’t actually lies, but rather a necessary kindness.

“Imagine, our contemporaries discovering and reading every detail, every gory account of what we really do _sub rosa_.” I did imagine it, and my cock twitched at the thought. “I fear for their health!” he laughed and added “And the salvation of their eternal souls.” And then he made the sign of the cross over me with mock piety.

Now, with Charles II back on the ancestral throne, and having dispatched of my ambassadorial duties with _il stronzo_ (whose face, when he beheld and recognized in the wearer of the Order of the Golden Fleece the same man who had participated in his embarrassment over ten years prior, had been rather priceless), there was nothing keeping me in France. Except _him_ , my beautiful demon.

“We’ve been here too long, Aramis. Isn’t it time for the comte de La Fère and the chevalier d’Herblay to go to a better place?”

“You mean die.”

“Do I look passably like a man of sixty to you? I’m afraid soon I shall have to start telling people I am my own son - the vicomte de Bragelonne, or some such!”

“Poor dear demigod who doesn’t do bedeviling,” he laughed. “Do not worry, my darling, you’ll always be an old man _to me_.”

“I don’t know how you do not lose your mind, constantly projecting a different appearance to the world,” I let my head roll onto his shoulder and felt his lips press to my forehead. We had just gone at each other again, and my body still buzzed like a beehive. “You - who are so vain! Making yourself look old and decrepit.” I tittered and bit into the tight muscle of his chest.

“Fouquet is rich and powerful. His power had gotten me a highly coveted bishopric,” he explicated as if speaking of moving chess pieces across the board. “I have plans, Athos. Plans, and tools at my disposal to make those plans come to fruition. And then, when all the pieces are in place, I shall be Pope. Pope Renatus I. Won’t that be a laugh!”

“I have never asked you what they are, Aramis, your tools and plans. I don’t wish to know,” I admitted. I was afraid I may not entirely approve, had I known. “But why is Porthos helping you reinforce Belle-Île for Fouquet?”

“Because Porthos was bored and I needed obscurity. No one casts a bigger shadow than our Titan. Besides,” he pressed his hand to my cock again, “aren’t you happy to see him here?”

“Ecstatic. But enough - we've had a good run in France. The three of us should leave. We need to go away, and the sooner the better. Perchance to Africa or the Orient.”

“But I’ve almost won the game, Athos. And there are no popes in Africa.”

“I don’t know if I have any more memoirs left in me.”

“Just give me five more years. What’s five years to a creature like yourself?”

I closed my eyes and let his arms cradle and lull me. He was right: five years was nothing. A blink of an eye. After all, he had waited for me for that long whilst I traversed Tartarus, I could wait for him to finish his chess game. I only hoped that he would be content come checkmate.

***

“Are chyortik’s delicate fingers in pain still?” Athos lifted my left hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles with tender lips, one after the other. Then, he pressed his lips to my palm and the heat of his breath made my skin tingle.

“Your Titanic cousin doesn’t know his own strength,” I muttered, for my bones had almost shattered under the pressure of Porthos’ handshake. “I believe he becomes more and more powerful with each passing year.”

“Not unlike yourself, Your Grace.” I flashed my fangs at him and he laughed. “’Tis a pity he only shook your left hand,” he said, stretching out in the sheets with his arm above his head, nude and supple like a beautiful marine creature. “Had your right hand been indisposed, M. l’évêque, you wouldn’t be able to make rude gestures at d’Artagnan again. One might think my Grigori’s aggravating habit has rubbed off on you.”

“Don’t worry, M. le comte, my hand is fully functional still,” I replied with a swift and nimble motion designed to illustrate the veracity of my words, and he yelped. “And the rude gesture you are referring to, you heathen ignoramus, was my episcopal blessing that I so graciously bestowed on your pet the moment I spotted him in the crowd.”

“Did he bow?” Athos asked, eyes sparkling with mirth even as his lips opened for mine.

“All the way down to the ground.”

“Did he kneel?” Athos breathed, pulling out from our kiss with a soft lick across my upper lip. “Did he kneel before you, Sir Bishop?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, you deviant.” I bit into the swell of his lower lip and he arched into me with a groan. “On your knees,” I whispered. “And I shall bless you – more thoroughly than I’ve ever blessed any sinner before.”

Cleansed of his sins, but soiled with the effusions of our communion, Athos reclined in the pillows an hour later. The heathen smirk had made way to an expression of sleepy contentment. “What now, Bishop?” he asked me in a voice that was thick and syrupy with sated fatigue.

“I have to dress.” I pulled my leg off his thigh, and we both winced as my skin unglued from his.

“Why?”

“I believe Porthos would not appreciate it if I appeared in his room au naturel in the middle of the night. Or in fact any time of the day.” I kissed Athos on the shoulder and reached across for my discarded episcopal vestments. “It already gave him palpitations when he noticed my robe was tucked up on one side when I came into the room where he and d’Artagnan waited.”

“That was very careless of you, Aramis.”

“Of me? Who was it who insisted on hitching up my robe – ‘once more _for luck_ ’, as I believe the phrase went – before I was released and permitted to go and greet our friends?”

“I was merely attempting to help chyortik regain his equilibrium,” the insolent godling proclaimed, stroking his spent cock lazily. “Seeing d’Artagnan in the crowd had set you on edge.”

“You could say that,” I muttered, buttoning my robe. “How does he do it, Athos?” I asked with an edge of desperation. “How does he always appear in the most inopportune moment to foil our plans?”

“ _Our_ plans, Aramis?”

“You were almost burned alive in England, if I may remind you, because d’Artagnan blundered into your path. If you don’t care for your own life, think of poor Grimaud. How would he have felt to burn to a crisp, because his Kyrios was too stubborn to leave a burning house?”

“Aramis!” Athos sat up and pointed a long finger at me. “You _do_ like my Watcher! I’ve suspected it for some time.”

“Hmph!” Fortunately, I was pulling on my boots, which absolved me from the necessity of making him a reply.

“It was very sweet of you to permit him to powder your hair, chyortik,” Athos continued, laughter vibrating in his throat. “The white threads give you the most distinguished appearance. And your eyes look more luminous than ever.”

My gaze dropped to his groin as he spoke those words, where his cock was swelling already.

When I looked back up, I saw Athos watching me with expressive eyes. “Why are you going to haunt Porthos at this time of night?” he asked softly.

“Because if I didn’t, I would have to send you away now.” I stepped to the window and watched through the curtains for light in the window of the room I had assigned to d’Artagnan. It didn’t necessarily mean anything if he extinguished it, for I was well aware that the Gascon was capable of sneaking and snooping around my house at night without the aid of a candle, but I had to take the risk.

“You know that our Titanic friend is not at his best after sundown.”

I sighed and looked at Athos over my shoulder. “It almost sounds as if you _wanted_ to leave.”

“If you don’t tell me what you’re planning, I might,” he threatened. I send him a commiserating sidelong glance, and we both laughed.

“What I am planning, my sweet godling,” I said, leaping onto the bed to thrust my tongue between his lips and my hand between his legs. “What I’m planning is to send Porthos to Paris with an important message. It’s either him or you, I can’t trust anyone else. And seeing as you’ve only just arrived in my humble abode, I was thinking you would like to enjoy my hospitality for a little while longer.”

“The hospitality of the Bishop of Vannes is exceptional,” Athos replied, sliding down in the pillows and luxuriating under the caresses of my hands. “Truly, you are the embodiment of Christian spirit, sweet diablik.”

“ _‘Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling_ ’,” I quoted into the warm spot of flesh behind his jaw. “‘For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat.’” I nibbled at the side of his neck. “‘I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you clothed me-’ Well, no, actually, I was clothed and you unclothed me. You _heathen_.”

Athos was laughing. “Don’t- _ah_! Don’t think your vile distractions work!” His hand dug into my scalp as I kissed a path down his breast and lapped at a swollen nipple. “Begone, evil demon!” he moaned and thrust his hips into me.

“No,” I sat back on my heels and looked down on myself. “You’re leaving stains on my robe again.” For the evidence of his growing arousal clung damply to the dark fabric.

“Don’t worry, chyortik.” Athos reached out and pulled me down again. “M. Grimaud knows how to remove them without a trace.” I smiled and clung to him. “Why Paris?” My clever lover whispered into my hair. “Am I right in assuming that it has anything to do with the arrival of young M. Agnan? – _The_ most cunning alias, you must admit.”

“Admirably cunning,” I admitted, with my nose buried in the sweaty hairs on his chest. “And you should have seen his masterful disguise. Why, he wore on his head a calotte of threadbare velvet, and over the calotte a large black hat. He had even replaced his sword by a stick hung by a cord to his wrist. Truly, Athos, you have been right when you said that d’Artagnan is the smartest and cleverest man of us four.”

“And that is why Porthos has to go to Paris,” my godling guessed.

“M. Fouquet is in Paris,” I said and rolled out of Athos’ embrace to assume my watch by the window again. “Porthos has to go and warn him.”

“Hmm…” Athos crossed his hands beneath his head and was watching me from half-lidded eyes. “You know your own business best, Aramis. But don’t you think it is time to let it go? What do you want with Nicolas Fouquet? You will have to leave France soon anyway. How old did you tell d’Artagnan you were now?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“Fifty-seven,” he said with an edge of irony. “And I’m sixty. I was eight to ten years older than you when we first met d’Artagnan. Don’t you think he might notice that something is amiss?”

“He never has. He thinks I lie to him about everything.”

“You do lie to him about everything.”

Behind the curtains of d’Artagnan’s room, the light went out. I turned away from the window. “I’m off to wake up Porthos. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, my friend,” Athos said. “You realise that d’Artagnan will leap into the saddle and follow Porthos the moment he notices he is gone in the morning?”

“Not if I tell him that Porthos has gone fishing in the canal.”

“He won’t believe you.”

“No.” I pressed a kiss to Athos’ forehead. “He’ll believe Porthos went back to Belle-Île and follow him there.”

“You fiend,” Athos whispered.

“You love it.”

***

**Paris, August 1660**

Bright light blinded me as the bed curtains were violently drawn and Aramis hissed and burrowed into my armpit.

“Arise, _sirs_ ,” Grimaud pronounced with a sour physiognomy, as I shielded my eyes from the sun streaming into the room. “It is well past noon. Since when have you taken to sleeping so late?”

“Since we didn’t fall asleep past dawn, you pustulent blister on my demi-divine arse!”

“Even so, Kyrios. Not even your flitter-friend requires this much beauty rest.”

“I’m right fucking here!” Aramis scowled.

“Apologies, M. l’Évêque, I did not recognize you without your ecclesiastical paraphernalia.” Grimaud performed a dramatic eye roll and set some drinking water by the bed.

“Get the hell out,” I ordered, biting my lips to prevent from laughing.

It wasn’t what you think. Well, it was also _that_. But we had spent hours talking in my place on rue Guénégaud, small caresses passing back and forth between our hands and mouths, accustomed to the kind of intimacy neither of us had ever truly shared with anyone else. He talked, and I pressed my ear to his chest, listening to the sound his body made when his voice reverberated in his rib cage, like the ocean’s echo inside a seashell.

“So, after all that, I had to tell Fouquet to give Belle-Île to the King. Can you believe it?” I hummed into his flushed skin and kissed the arch of his ribs. “Now I really have to accelerate the time table for my plans or all my efforts will have been in vain.”

“Let it go, chyortik,” I muttered.

“What, only _you_ are allowed to put kings on the throne?” His hand grabbed for my ass with an air of outrage, and I pressed my cock in between his thighs and clamped my mouth over his.

It was likely another hour before he regained his usual eloquence. That time, his sharp wit was aimed at d’Artagnan. My demon wasn’t the forgiving kind, especially when the Gascon’s meddling resulted in flittermousian plans being foiled, as per our human friend’s uncanny abilities.

“You look the same as you did when he met you,” I mused, worming my finger through a solitary tendril of messy curls that fell over his neck.

“Not to him.” Aramis smiled against my lips. “I scramble his brain a bit, I admit. He thinks I’m quite the aging prelate, and not at all as dashing as himself.” He chortled, amused by some secret thought of his own. “Still, the little asshole embellished it! Do you know what he said to Porthos? He actually thinks I’ve got gout and teeth missing!”

“How many teeth?”

“Two! Well, four, because your cousin Porthos added fuel to the fire. He thinks it’s hilarious.”

“It _is_ hilarious, chyortik.”

“When I am Pope, I am going to excommunicate you,” he threatened and flipped me over onto my stomach. His body pressed down on top of mine, radiating strength and warmth. “Your name will be anathema.”

“Which name?”

His teeth clamped over my shoulder and his legs spread my own apart.

“Your mountain shall be demolished. Your seraglio of monasteries shall lie in ruins.”

“Leave those poor monks alone, Aramis,” I laughed at his over-dramaticized threats and curved into his touch. We did not sleep until well after dawn, and Grimaud had to have known it, lest he fashioned himself earplugs out of vegetables.

Grimaud had returned with a basin of hot water and his usual supplies for my morning preparations to find Aramis drinking from my wrist.

“Don’t give me that look, M. Grimaud, the linens are still clean. Relatively,” Aramis laughed, open-mouthed but silent, like a Greek comedy mask. “I can hear him rolling his eyes from across the corridor, you know,” my beloved whispered into my ear.

“Is it time to make me look appropriately aged?” I frowned up at my guardian, who gestured to me that he was at the end of his tether.

“He means old,” Aramis snarked and rolled out of the bed, wrapping himself up in his dressing gown and sniffing at the drinking water with disdain.

“How long are we going to stay in this place, Kyrios? I am a Watcher, not a magician.”

“Does he do age spots as well?” Aramis remarked, lounging in the easy chair, admiring his own elegant white hand in the glow of daylight.

“You’re next, M. l’Évêque,” Grimaud snarked. “Let me do your makeup, you will never need to bedevil again!”

“How dare you! No one touches my face!” Aramis threw my guardian a predatory look.

“He is too vain,” Grimaud gestured to me.

“Leave him alone,” I signed back. “Or I’ll let him drink you again.”

Grimaud shrugged, unimpressed, and continued to powder my hair and deepen my wrinkles with artful shading and skill I did not comprehend.

“Give him crow’s feet,” Aramis mewled, “He’s still too beautiful. I don’t want anyone else to look at him and covet him.”

I pursed my lips and Grimaud demonstratively bit his tongue.

“If you _had_ to pretend to be your own son, Athos,” Aramis mocked from his throne, “would you tell everyone Marie was your mother? Surely, that would be the logical conclusion everyone would draw.”

For some reason I could not quite place my finger on, his taunting tones at the mention of Marie raised my hackles.

"I've only stayed so long in one place because _you_ like it here, with your endless intrigues and cabals,” I snapped, my patience wearing thin from his running commentary. It was a dangerous game we played, remaining in France for so long. “One more word and I'm gone."

"Don't excite yourself, old man, or else your heart may- Fuck! Sorry! Sorry."

He leapt out of the easy chair, his eyes glowing pools of emotion. He was a wicked fiend - and I adored him.

"Grimaud, leave the room,” I ordered. “Now."

He was going to have to redo my makeup. Later.


	2. Chapter 2

**Paris, 1662**

My mortal body had grown tiresome and burdensome off late. Immune as I was to human diseases and weaknesses, I was accustomed to being in good health and in a state of perpetual physical fitness. Whenever my ageing body began to fail me, I would return to the waters and be reborn young, healthy, full of vitality and vigour and ready to tackle my new life with verve.

Alas, humans had grown strong over the last centuries. They no longer feared the forces of nature to the same extent that their ancestors used to fear them. They fancied themselves masters of this Earth, who had tamed its savage aspects and who were on the brink of solving its mysteries. Water and its sources were no longer venerated, the powers of the Ondines waned. I should have seen it coming, for I had been aware that what they called ‘civilisation’ had been extinguishing the old gods. Athos’ own family, all-powerful as they had once been, had been banished to the Holy Mount; no longer corporeal, they could only ever manifest if their wayward son and brother invoked them in his thoughts and prayers. Once the last of the demigods died, they would disappear and live only in human memory and their tales. The One God, to whom Aramis, with his uncanny instinct for attaching himself to the most powerful, prayed, had displaced the Old Ones. One day, they would be destroyed for good.

I would never be destroyed, for water was eternal. Yet after walking the Earth as a daughter of the House of Rohan for centuries, I loved my human existence. I left my watery cradle gladly to assume a human shape and to wear my armour of flesh and skin. My sisters didn’t understand why I would put an end to my eternal life and climb on land to become mortal. They did not understand that there was such an exhilarating joy of being _one_. Of becoming a drop, free to go wherever it pleases, rather than being swept away in a gush of water; of growing a membrane that separated me from my kin. A torrent of water is unstoppable when it bursts through rock and soil and tears down everything in its path. And yet, I gave up that power for the pleasure of being an individual, whose reach, whose power, whose life is limited.

The pleasures of the flesh: they are aptly named. Yet it was not just that: it was the pleasures of the mind more than anything that drove me to throwing myself onto _terra firma_ , of beaching myself again and again. I gave up eternity, yet I gained a consciousness that was mine alone.

When my mortal body died, I would be returned to eternal life. Humans decay after death; I liquefied. I would trickle out of my coffin and pool into a stream, and I would rejoin my sisters and become one with them. Why was the thought so repugnant to me? Why did I prefer the circle of life and death to an eternal existence? The human mind is said to be rational, yet the decision my mind made was anything but. It made me choose death.

After my human father had died, the Rohans were no longer willing to honour the ancient pact with the Ondines. I had cried human tears when Hercule de Rohan breathed his last breath, for I had loved him as dearly as any daughter would love the best of fathers. He had loved the Ondines, playful companions of his youth, and he had been our most devoted and dedicated ally. Even as a little girl, I was sure of his tender love and his unwavering support, and he always spoke up for me, even during my wildest exploits.

Hercule de Rohan was dead, and his family, _my_ family, had turned their backs on me. The human clock was ticking, time was running out, my body was wilted already, and one day, it would cease to breathe air and return to water. I was a human woman in her sixties; I could go on for several decades more and find someone, _someone_ , whose place I could take. I couldn’t make my own flesh and blood, I had to inhabit that of a mortal.

A human had to become water so that I could become flesh.

The pact with the Rohans had been broken, and the pact with the Bourbons and Habsburgs was not yet sealed. Anne of Austria had grown distant and cold after the birth of the dauphin. She feared me now as much as she had used to love me once. Her secret was a terrible one: terrible for a queen and terrible for a mother. Did she know that her son – the spare, the unwanted, the one who had not ascended the throne – had been taken from the house where he had been concealed all his life and locked up in a dungeon by a bloodsucking creature of the night?

On the night when I arrived in the Place Baudoyer, followed by a servant armed to the teeth, I had not seen Aramis for several years. The large house, surrounded by gardens and enclosed in the Rue Saint-Jean by the shops of toolmakers, was protected from prying looks and was walled in by a triple rampart of stone, noise, and verdure, like an embalmed mummy in its triple coffin. A man walked towards it with a firm step. His dark cloak and long sword plainly revealed one in search of adventures and danger. Hardly had he entered the house when the clock struck eight; minutes later, I approached and knocked at the same door, which an old woman immediately opened for me. I raised my veil as I entered. Once I had reached the vestibule, the pale, warlike cavalier advanced towards me, holding out his hand.

“Good day, my dear duchess,” he said.

“How do you do, my dear Aramis?” I replied. My heart had leapt into my throat. His beauty was as absolute as ever, and the _power_ that radiated from him took my breath away. He led me to an elegant apartment, on the high windows of which were reflected the expiring rays of the setting sun, which filtered gaudily through the dark green needles of the adjacent firs. We sat down side by side. Neither of us thought of asking for additional light in the room, and we buried ourselves in the shadow, as if we wished to bury ourselves in oblivion.

“Chevalier,” I broke the silence first. “You have never given me a single sign of… _life_ since our interview at Fontainebleau. I confess that your presence there on the day of the Franciscan’s death, and your initiation in certain secrets, caused me the liveliest astonishment I ever experienced in any life.”

“I can explain my presence there to you, as well as my initiation,” said Aramis.

Now that the moment had arrived, I suddenly found I no longer wanted to hear the explanation. The intrigue, which would have amused only a few years ago, was abhorrent to me. Aramis had contrived to become the General of the Jesuits: another ambition satisfied, another step taken on the golden stairs leading up to the papal throne. Had he still listened to my guidance, I would have advised him to linger there, for being the supreme ruler of the Society of Jesus was a position more powerful, and less vulnerable, than being Pope.

“But let us, first of all,” I said, “talk a little of ourselves, for our friendship is by no means of recent date.”

He inclined his head politely. “Yes, Madame. And if Heaven wills it, we shall continue to be friends. I will not say for a long time, but forever.”

“That is quite certain, chevalier, and my visit is a proof of it.”

“Our interests, duchess, are no longer the same as they used to be,” said Aramis, smiling without apprehension in the growing gloom, secure in the knowledge that the shadows concealed the fact that his smile was less agreeable and not as bright as formerly. Yet, I noticed it, and my heart clenched.

“No, chevalier, at the present day we have other interests,” I said, lightly, to mask the sadness that had descended over me. I had come here to bargain and fight, yet I felt myself grow weary with every passing minute, with every passing word. Aramis had been my lover once. Nay, more than that: my lover, my beloved, my ally, my acolyte, my servant, my friend. _Mine_. Even though I had always known of Athos, I had also known that the friendship and devotion that Aramis felt for me were real and true. Had all that had bound us together for so many centuries died just because his jealousy and his ambition had overruled his affection?

I tried to read the answer to this in his eyes as I continued: “Every life brings its own interests. And, as we now understand each other in conversing, as perfectly as we formerly did without saying a word, let us talk, if you like.”

We talked, then. We talked of Fontainebleau, where we had met at the foot of the grave so recently closed. The poor Franciscan monk lay buried there. The Franciscan, with whom I had certain business transactions and who had died so singularly before the matter could be resolved. The poor monk whose ring and powers Aramis had inherited.

“You know that my children have ruined and stripped me of everything,” I said.

“How terrible, dear duchess.”

“Terrible indeed. This obliged me to resort to some means of obtaining a new life, and to avoid vegetating for the remainder of my existence, as I no longer have either credit or protectors.”

“You, who had extended protection towards so many persons,” said Aramis, softly. I could have sworn that his fangs flashed in the shadow.

I would _not_ beg for his help.

But I would remind him of the obligations he had towards me: if not as my friend, then as the General of the Jesuits. That powerful Order was in my debt. The King of Spain was in my debt. The Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, my bosom friend of old, was in my debt. Monies that had changed hands, letters written, letter intercepted, secrets and lies, an epistle bound to compromise M. Fouquet, the friendship of the King of Spain, and the death of the old General of the Jesuits: my knowledge was extensive, yet the missiles of my words ricocheted off Aramis’ smooth countenance. He truly fancied himself invincible, my demonic adversary. “As usual, you reason like an angel,” I conceded at last.

He smiled. He called me a blackmailer; he called me pathetic, misguided and weak. He didn’t use any of those words, and he kept smiling at me affably. But I knew him, my lover of two centuries. I had watched him destroy humans, just like his One God destroyed the Old Ones. He was a true adherent of the God of the Israelites, the God who was a consuming fire, a jealous God, a God who did not forgive your transgressions or your sins. A God whose anger, once kindled, would smite you from the face of the Earth.

Had Aramis shared the secret of Philippe’s whereabouts, of Philippe’s _existence_ , with anyone? That was unlikely. Anne of Austria, Aramis and myself were the only three people in the world who knew about the second Bourbon, and Aramis was the only one who knew where the boy was presently concealed.

As if he had read my thoughts, the beautiful abomination narrowed his eyes. “The secrets that any particular member of the Order may have acquired are unwholesome, and carry with them the germs of misfortune for whosoever may reveal them.” There was an edge of warning in his silky tones, sharp and deadly like a hidden blade.

That gave me pause. I reflected for a moment “That is more serious: I will think it over. For there are many secrets that carry the germs of misfortune, my dear bishop.”

Notwithstanding the profound obscurity, Aramis recoiled as if stung by a basilisk glance, scorched by a white-hot iron that escaped from my eyes and plunged into his heart.

“Let us recapitulate,” he said, determined to keep himself on his guard, and glided his hand into his vestments, where I knew he had a dagger concealed on his breast.

I smiled amicably. “Exactly, let us recapitulate; short accounts make long friends.” I paused; Aramis didn’t speak, as if determined to let me show my hand first. “I shall speak with Anne of Austria,” I continued gently. “She will be most interested in the fate of her lost son.”

“Philippe is not lost. He is safe,” Aramis said. He laughed. “Safe from being thrown into the waters and _drowned_.”

“You don’t understand anything,” I said softly and stood up. “If you give Philippe to me, he will live forever.”

“No,” the demon shook his head. “If I keep him, he will live forever: in the blood of the Bourbons, in the name of Louis XIV.”

“Not if the queen has any say in it. Don’t forget: Anne of Austria has two sons of the same age. One, over whom she has much sway, and one whom she abandoned. Which one, do you think, M. le général, does she wish to see on the throne?”

“I pledge you my word, duchess, that you will not be able to make use of your knowledge with the queen.”

“Oh! Yes, indeed. I can make use of everything with the queen.”

I had said enough. With those parting words, I advanced a few steps towards the door, my head held high.

Aramis, however, had reserved one exposure which I had not expected.

He rang the bell. Candles immediately appeared in the adjoining room, and the Bishop of Vannes found himself completely encircled by lights. They shone upon my worn, haggard face, revealing every feature all too clearly, as I stood immediately before a tall mirror. Aramis fixed a long ironical look upon my pale, thin, withered cheeks, my dim, dull eyes, and upon my lips, which he used to kiss so fervently and which I now kept carefully closed over my discoloured, scanty teeth.

The demon, for his part, had arranged himself into a graceful attitude, with his haughty and intelligent head thrown back. He smiled so as to reveal teeth still brilliant and dazzling. Oh, his mind too was brilliant. I understood the trick that had been played here. Thereupon, without even saluting Aramis, who bowed with the ease and grace of the musketeer of early days, I hurried away with trembling steps, shaking with rage so deep and abiding that, had I turned around one more time, I would have torn him to shreds with my nails. Aramis glided across the room like Zephyrus to lead me to the door. Robbed of speech, I made a sign to my servant to resume his musket.

A bullet would not kill the monster. But even as I fled the scene of my defeat, I knew one thing: Aramis was not the only one who was privy to the deepest, darkest secrets that the Jesuits had fathomed. Those holy men who knew how to find and nurture demons knew also how to destroy them.

***

**Bragelonne, 1662**

“No,” Aramis’ fingers wrapped around my ankle. “You are not escaping my clutches so easily, count.”

“Hades’ balls!” Segundo pronounced and pecked some seeds out of my outstretched hand.

“I have to feed the bird, Aramis, he’s not immortal.”

“Come back to bed,” my kitten purred and burrowed deeper under the covers. “I’m hungry too, you know. Famished, in fact.”

“You’ve been wasteful of your resources,” I taunted him. 

He had arrived the previous night, flushed with victory. I had inquired if he had many stories to tell me, but instead, he tackled me right into an armchair and had his way with me in the salon. I did not wish to think of what Grimaud had to do to get the serving staff out and under lock and key for the duration of the bishop’s visit.

“Damn flitterbat!” Segundo squawked. 

“I’ll pluck you bald, you spawn of Lucifer!”

“That’s no way to talk to your other daddy,” I laughed and stroked the parrot’s impertinent head.

“I love Aramis!”

“That’s better.”

“Why must you allow the infernal creature into your bed chamber?” Aramis sighed with exasperation. “Wait, allow me to rephrase that.” I snickered as he burrowed deeper yet into the covers.

“Parrots are exceptionally social birds,” I explained watching my wayward son gorge himself from my palm. “I wouldn't want him to get depressed and suicidal.”

“Come back to bed,” Aramis whined. One foot poked out from the coverlet and beckoned me. “It’s cold in here without you. You swore to love and provide for me.”

“Did I?” I laughed, approaching the bed and drawing the covers away from him, to allow myself to slip back under. “I must have been very drunk when I swore that. I can barely provide for myself.” I picked up his hand and pressed it my lips. His long eyelashes fluttered and rested against his high cheekbones. “What’s this?” I asked, noticing a new band on one of his fingers. I flipped his palm over and examined the insignia on the ring, which had been turned inwards, to hide its secrets from prying eyes.

“New ring. Do you like it?”

" _Chyortik…_ ,” I narrowed my eyes at him and squeezed his hand. “Where did you get it?"

"Oh, from an old Franciscan monk... who happened to have been the General of the Jesuit Order!" Aramis wiggled his eyebrows but did not meet my eyes, choosing instead to curl up against me and hide his smug expression under my chin.

"What did you do to him?" I frowned.

"Nothing! He was old and frail, and, um, he might have drunk something that didn't agree with him. I just happened to be there to ease his passage to the astral plane."

“Aramis…” I sighed. He peeked up at me with his doe-like eyes and pressed his lips to mine.

“It’s nothing to worry about, old man. Just another move on the chessboard, that’s all.” His hand skated over my ribs and pressed along my hipbone. His entire body pressed against mine, imprinting itself along my flesh. “I could stay here with you forever,” he muttered.

“Then why don’t you?”

His fingers traveled down over my thighs, leaving red streaks in the wake of his talon-like fingernails. My cock twitched at the memory of his fangs piercing the flesh below my groin the previous night. 

“You’ll never guess what I heard, Athos,” he mewled, changing the subject entirely too smoothly. “Your old neighbor, the La Vallière girl, you know, the one who used to be so enamoured of your damned bird?”

“Louise? What about her?”

“Indeed,” Aramis laughed, his hand trailed up again, into the dip of my lower back, and up over the swell of my ass. “She has become the King’s mistress.”

“ _Louise?_ The lame girl who used to chase after Segundo and cried when you took him away?”

“The very one. I understood it was all to be a big joke - a decoy to distract from the King’s true affaire with Madame. But, as fate would have it, he fell in love with the country bumpkin! I suppose some men do still find virginity rather charming.”

I shook my head. “Louise isn’t cut out for the life of a royal mistress. She’s… pious. Don’t laugh, chyortik. Not everyone’s piety equates to your own.”

“I worship my god on my knees, you ingrate,” he hissed at me and, as if to demonstrate his devotion, slid down my body until he hovered over me on all fours, with his mouth poised above my half-swollen cock. 

“Go on, then,” I smiled and shut my eyes, content to let him prove his religious fervor to me a while longer.

We had shared a late afternoon repast in the bedroom, neither one of us inclined to attire ourselves in anything more complicated than our dressing gowns. I flushed thinking of the despoiled salon downstairs and wondered whether any of my people would need to be let go as a result of what they may have seen.

“I’ll bedevil them before I leave, love. You worry too much,” Aramis said, buttering his bread.

“And you don’t worry enough. You’ve always accused me of flaunting my powers, Aramis, what of your own?”

“I worry. I worry enough for everyone. Why, just the other day, I worried so much about Fouquet that I suggested he pay court to the La Vallière girl, so that she could tame the King, as both his confessor and his sweetheart.” I shook my head listening to his schemes. “Did not work, by the way. They had a row and she fled to the monastery at Chaillot.”

“I told you she was pious.”

“Only to be dragged back to the palace, kicking and screaming no doubt. It was your pet, d’Artagnan, incidentally, who revealed her whereabouts to the King.”

“Aramis, my head spins.” I put my food down and pushed my plate away.

“He’s always sticking his long, beak-like nose into things that should not concern him!” Aramis finally exploded. “Even _that_. You will see, one day, the King is going to order him to arrest Fouquet, and then I shall have no choice but to eat him!”

“Aramis, be careful,” I reached out and took his hand in mine. My thumb passed over the golden band of his Jesuit ring. “You might get lucky enough to have the King order d’Artagnan to arrest _you_.”

“This is exactly why I plan on replacing the King,” he smirked.

“With… what?”

“With a better King.”

“Aramis…” I sighed and averted my eyes from his. “How many times have I told you: keep a low profile, don’t draw attention to yourself. This quest for the Papacy, it is madness!”

“How long did it take you to finally have _your_ fill, Athos?” he snapped, letting go of my hand. “Did you lose your taste for it after the first thousand years? Or was it the second?”

“That isn’t fair. I never tried to be King nor Pope.”

“No, I don’t suppose you’d need to - being already a god!” I remained silent for his rebuke wasn’t entirely off mark. I had lived much longer than him, and reached, in some ways, much higher. I had altered the course of history in ways that would turn his stomach to contemplate. “Besides, my love,” he softened his tone, “I’m not only doing this for myself. A better king would suit all of us quite nicely. A better king would probably have let little Louise retire to a convent, to live out her penitent and pious life. A better king would value his Minister of Finances rather than jealously persecute him. A better monarch would make Porthos a duke and d’Artagnan marshall of France!”

“Stop,” I squeezed his hand. “You’re really galloping away now on the chariot of altruism.”

“You don’t believe me,” his face sank.

“No, my beloved diablik, I believe that you mean well. In your own way.”

“Do you think I go too far, Athos?”

I exhaled the breath I had been holding and leaned back in my chair. “I promised you five years,” I replied. “You have three more at your disposal.”

“But you think I’m making a mistake,” he scraped his knife against the porcelain plate.

“I think you’re risking a lot,” I conceded. “But I don’t know if it’s a mistake. You’re in it for the hazard of it. It’s a game of chance.”

“I took a gamble when I left Snagov with you,” he smiled, and our eyes met over the remnants of our repast. “But I’ve never regretted it.”

“Not even when we made each other miserable?” I had to ask.

He paused, a half-smile hidden in the corner of his mouth as he contemplated my question. He looked up at me with eyes bright as the aurora borealis. 

“It was just pain, Athos. Pain is what reminds us that we are alive.”

My heart leapt inside my chest and I pushed my chair out, away from the small table. I was very glad we never bothered to leave my bed chamber.

***

**Paris, April 1664**

The comte de La Fère lay sweat-slick and panting in the sheets. His cock twitched and shuddered in my fist. “Don’t you _dare_ ,” I mouthed against the throbbing vein and trailed the tip of my tongue down the swell of his testicles. The salt of his sweat mingled with the sweet metallic bouquet of his blood that coated my lips and tongue. His body throbbed with divine energy as his veins replenished themselves. The wound at the top of his thigh had closed under the gentle laps of my tongue, and his healed skin was soft and tender under my fingers.

“Please, Aramis!” my godling choked out. I had kept him on edge for hours, kindling his lust and reining him in in turn. The air in the bedchamber was thick and sultry, and moisture clung to our skin and matted our hair.

“Patience, my love,” I whispered and jabbed my tongue into the slick crevice behind his balls.

Truly, he was of divine stock, my beautiful idol, for a mortal man would have long passed out from exhaustion. When the first rays of the sun crept through the curtains, Athos lay spent and languid, steaming gently as his flushed body cooled, and I traced lazy patterns on his chest.

“Welcome back, chyortik,” my lover whispered into my hair. I smiled.

“Thank you for coming to see me.” I kissed his sated skin. “I know how much you are loath to leave your rural idyll and disguise yourself as an aging mortal.”

His chest shuddered as he exhaled a puff of laughter. “I had no choice,” he murmured. “I missed you, Aramis.”

My heart stopped and then fluttered like a frantic bird. “I missed you too,” I confessed. There had been a moment last winter when, seated among bishops and cardinals of the Papal States, I looked up at the stained-glass windows and a ray of celestial light poured in and stung my eyes. I blinked and a thought flashed through my mind. ‘What am I doing here?’ Why, I asked myself in a moment of horrible clarity, why was I not in France with Athos? Was chasing after the papal frock a worthy pursuit or was I fooling myself, like an Arthurian knight who embarked on the quest for the Holy Grail?

I had pushed those thoughts away, but doubts lingered. And so, rather than completing the mission with which the Franciscan monk had entrusted me on his deathbed, I decided to let the Pope live for the time being. The humiliating Treaty of Pisa had lost Alexander VII Avignon and had stripped the Church of privileges and powers. I was not in a hurry to swap the ring of the General of the Jesuits for the mitre of the Bishop of Rome if it meant I would become the pontiff of a crumbling empire.

“I have a surprise for you,” Athos continued in a languid voice.

“Hmm?”

“I went to an exhibition at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.” He kissed me on the top of my head. “You never told me you sat for a portrait.”

“I did?” I furrowed my brow. “Oh. Yes, you’re right. But that was years ago, when M. Fouquet and I were getting acquainted and I spent a lot of time in his company. He had asked Sébastien Bourdon to one of his Epicureans parties once, and one thing led to another…”

“M. Bourdon saw your real face,” Athos said.

“Yes, it turns out that bedevilling doesn’t work in paintings,” I admitted. “It was a mistake. It won’t happen again. Henceforth – no pictures!”

“I am amazed that Bourdon is still alive and well.”

“I said it doesn’t work in paintings.” I brushed my mouth against his shoulder. “It does work on painters.”

Athos laughed. “Well. You will be happy to hear that I acquired the painting in question. It is safe in Bragelonne. Chyortik’s hair looks exceptionally lush in it.”

I rolled my hips and pressed my groin into his thigh. “Flatterer,” I muttered with my teeth against his collarbone.

“It was labelled ‘Nicolas Fouquet’,” Athos continued, laughing softly as I nibbled along the ridge of his clavicle. “It looks _nothing_ like him!”

“Mortals are so blind,” I said and bit into the muscle of his breast.

He yelped and tugged at my hair, laughing. “Have you seen your dear friend Nicolas since your return?”

“He introduced me to the king.”

“Indeed?” Athos raised himself on his elbow and looked down on me. “Chyortik’s empire is growing apace, I see. What did His Majesty say?”

“He promised me a new bishopric. He proclaimed himself surprised that I had never set foot on Belle- Île.”

“And what did M. Fouquet say?”

“He said.” I laughed and kissed him on the mouth. “What he said, Athos, was: ‘Upon my word, d’Herblay, your confidence alarms me more than the king’s displeasure. Who can you possibly be, after all?’ Isn’t this hilarious, my godling?”

“Aramis, be careful. I told you once, I told you a thousand times: it doesn’t pay to be too blatant. You must be careful, my chyortik, and keep your head down. Do not flaunt your superhuman nature. Not _all_ humans are blind.”

“Not like d’Artagnan.” I giggled into the hollow of his throat. “He has known us for almost forty years, Athos, and he never noticed anything. Whereas M. Fouquet-”

“What?” Athos dug his fingers into the flesh of my arse and pulled me closer, trapping his swelling cock between our bodies. “What has M. le Surintendant noticed?”

“He didn’t notice anything, not as such.” I dipped my tongue between his parted lips and tasted ambrosia. “Let’s just say he’s in no condition to notice anything… or even to think straight… when he’s with me.”

“ _Chyortik_ …!”

“Don’t worry my love,” I murmured, trailing my lips along the line of his jaw. “Compared to yours, his blood is _nothing_.” His skin yielded to the pressure of my fangs, his body swelled and arched towards mine, a groan tore from his throat, and the nectar of the gods flooded my mouth and my senses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps Audience would enjoy seeing the portrait in question. Here it is. It is "purported to be Nicolas Fouquet", but I think we can all tell he looks nothing like M. Fouquet.
> 
>  


	3. Chapter 3

**Bragelonne, July 1665**

I was returning to Bragelonne from Paris by carriage, with Segundo in tow. After all, I had appearances to keep up. Appearances of being a man in his sixties.

I was returning from the Bastille, where d’Artagnan had conducted me, and then escorted me out the same night, after what was surely a stint of reckless bravery on his part, which he proved gentlemanly enough not to inform me about. 

I had spent half the time of my journey still laughing about my “rescue”, remembering Porthos, outfitted in full pirate regalia down to Segundo on his shoulder, as he overtook the carriage carrying me and d’Artagnan away from the Bastille, in a display worthy of our adventures in Tartarus.

“I’m no longer a prisoner,” I had informed my cousin. “And what are you doing with Raoul Segundo?”

“He flew to me to tell me you’d been arrested,” my cousin explained, casting a suspicious look at our human companion, “by d’Artagnan.”

Even for a bird as smart as Segundo, that was incredibly precise information. I did not wish to think which god or goddess had to be propitiated in thanks. 

“Well, now I am free. I believe the parrot is mine,” I said and embraced my reckless, feathery progeny, who cooed in my ear and nipped at my hair in a graphic display of affection. “You’re a good boy,” I told him. “Daddy is very proud of you.” And then I embraced Porthos, whose loss of parrot had not diminished his imposing appearance.

The other half of my travel time, I was lost in thought over what I had seen in the Bastille. Namely: Aramis. More specifically: Aramis as the Bishop of Vannes, and certainly not there on any ecclesiastical mission. 

A few days later, he had torn into Bragelonne as if he owned it, sending my staff scurrying to and fro, uncertain how to behave in the presence of His Greatness. He cut the air before the startled populace with the sign of a cross before ascending the staircase, at the top of which I had awaited him.

“Your Excellency,” I bowed and pressed my lips to the amethyst ring he wore next to the more inconspicuous band of the Jesuit Order.

“You asshole!”

He had grabbed my hand and pulled, nay dragged me into my bedchamber, slamming the double-doors behind him. His cloak billowed from the force of his entry, making him look as if he really had sprouted giant bat wings for a moment.

“What the devil were you doing in the Bastille?” He veered upon me, crowding me in and pressing me backwards, towards the bed.

“Romantic surprise, darling?”

“How did you know I would be there? Who told you? Was it your family again?”

“A happy coincidence in which Tyche guided my steps,” I replied, watching his nostrils flare in ire. “What were _you_ doing in the Bastille, my dark Narcissus?”

“Having dinner with an old friend.”

“So was I.”

He pushed me backwards with a powerful motion and I fell onto the mattress without resisting him.

“What were you doing with d’Artagnan?” he pressed on, straddling my hips. His fangs gleamed in the candlelight. “Why were you there? What had you done?”

“D’Artagnan had me under arrest,” I began to explain.

“Ah!”

“Calm down, flittermouse. Everything worked out well in the end.”

“I must kill him. Do not restrain me a moment longer.”

“Aramis,” I pulled down on his cloak, making him lose balance and come tumbling into my arms and against my chest. I pressed an insistent kiss to his forehead, forcing his frown lines to unfold with the touch of my lips. “It wasn’t his fault. I had… Well,” I laughed. His body had relaxed against mine and he turned his chin, allowing our mouths to meet. His kiss was ferocious, yet needy.

“ _What_ did you do this time?” he asked, rolling off me and pressing along my side, a wildcat tamed, for the time being.

“I had words with the King.”

“Louis?”

“The same. You won’t believe the things I said to him.” And then I added, “Well, actually, you know me well enough to imagine at least some of them.”

“About _what_?” his voice shook with worry. He need not have fretted: I did not know his secrets. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have betrayed him to the King! It was Fouquet he should have been worried about all along, not me.

“Many things,” I sighed. “The La Vallière girl, mostly. Her mother, the marquise, has been inconsolable. But also his behavior towards his cousin Charles was despicable. Truly, he isn’t the kind of ruler I want to be associated with serving.”

“Athos, what in the name of your Father on Olympus!” He sat up, staring down at me with his mouth agape. I shrugged. So, I had burned _that_ bridge. What difference would it make? I wanted to leave France regardless. “At least tell me you did not flash your nipples in front of the monarch!” Aramis fumed.

“Of course not. I merely broke my sword before him and threw it at his feet.”

“Oh _gods_!”

For the briefest moment, I was not sure whether that had been an exclamation of rage or arousal. I should have know that in his case it was always both. His mouth came crashing down against mine and then his fingers were in my hair, twisting my head to expose the veins of my neck to his fangs. My body heaved up into his arms and I shut my eyes against the wave of pleasure that overwhelmed me when he drank from me.

When at last I was regaining a semblance of cogency, I stirred in the rumpled sheets around us and made my way up towards the pillows, tossing our discarded clothes to the floor and out of my way. Aramis’ arm came down and fingers interlaced with my own, pulling me up and into his embrace.

“Now, kitten,” I whispered into the sated flesh of his chest, “your turn to tell me what you were doing dining in the Bastille. Much though I enjoyed our little interlude there. Poor M. Baisemeaux must still be fanning himself.”

“He did not look under the table,” my kitten purred against my hair.

“We weren’t particularly subtle.”

“We weren’t that subtle when we were musketeers together either, my ardent lover. And M. Baisemeaux was one of our company. Need I remind you of that?”

“You’re avoiding the subject,” I pointed out, twirling a lock of his hair around my finger. It was as black and lustrous as ever before. I briefly wondered what he had made himself look like to poor, bedeviled Baisemeaux’s eye. The wily minx.

“You hate the King, Athos, so you should be fully approving of my plan,” he muttered. “I was in the Bastille because I had to gain access to a prisoner.”

“And who is this mysterious prisoner of yours?”

“A natural born son of Louis XIII, a Bourbon prince of the blood, and brother to King Louis XIV.”

“Aramis, what are you telling me?”

“There is a twin.”

“ _This_ has been your plan all along?”

“Kings nominate Popes.”

“But… I…” My gift of gab failed me. “Aramis, you _can’t_.”

His hands pressed into the small of my back and I looked into his eyes, two black pools in which I had drowned so many centuries ago. My demon lover.

“I _shall_ ,” he said. “It is already practically done.”

“Come away with me,” I begged, seized with sudden worry. “Come away before it is too late.”

“Is this why you had fallen out with the King? Was this your plan along, to get yourself banished? To force my hand into leaving France?”

“Aramis, your five years are up. We are going to leave!”

“Yes, we are going to leave France, my love. For the _Vatican_.”

I rolled out of his embrace. “This is madness.” I had spoken these words before, but this time I wondered whether they were actually true. His obsession with the papacy bordered on a mania.

“Orestes was mad!”

“Orestes had Pylades!” I exploded. “And he heeded him!” 

“And I have you! Or would you leave me now, is that it?”

“No, of course not.” I shook my head, not understanding the source of my own confusion. “I would never leave you, kitten, you know that.” Mad or not, Aramis was _mine_. His white hand flew out like a wing and brushed against my cheek. “Where you go, I shall go.”

Aramis smiled and scooted closer to me across the bed. “And will my people be your people? And my God, your God?”

“Don’t mock, flittermouse,” I whispered. “I fear what would become of you without me.”

“There is no me without you,” he spoke, pressing his forehead into my temple. 

I shouldn’t have let him leave that night. I should have followed him to Vaux and put an end to his schemes with Philippe. Or, at the very least, kept an eye on him and kept him away from Fouquet. Instead, I kissed him, and wished him luck.

***

**Vaux, August 1665**

Philippe Bourbon cowered behind my bed. Over the head of d’Artagnan, I fixed my gaze at the curtain behind which the alcove of my bedroom was concealed. “A true friend’s word is ever truth itself,” I assured d’Artagnan, who had reproached me with vile allegations, accusing me of wanting to assassinate the king. “If I think of touching, even with one finger, the son of Anne of Austria, the true king of this realm of France; if I have not the firm intention of prostrating myself before his throne; if in every idea I may entertain tomorrow will not be the most glorious day my king ever enjoyed – may Heaven’s lightning blast me where I stand!”

Truth rang in my voice as I invoked the ire of Athos’ Thunderous Father for the Gascon’s benefit. D’Artagnan, with his customary perspicacity and his superior knowledge of the human nature, saw plainly that I was not lying. The earnestness of my words, the studied slowness with which I pronounced them, the solemnity of my oath gave my companion the most complete satisfaction. He took hold of both my hands and shook them cordially, speaking words of friendship and praise. I pulled him into my embrace in order to conceal the flush on my face. D’Artagnan, deceived, did me honour. D’Artagnan, trustful and reliant, made me feel ashamed, for I could virtually feel Athos’ calm, dark gaze rest on me with mild reproof.

Reassured, pacified, d’Artagnan disappeared through the door, which I then bolted hurriedly, laughing quietly all the while. I closed up the chinks of the windows and called out: “Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”

Philippe crept from the alcove by pushing aside a sliding panel placed behind the bed. “M. d’Artagnan entertains a great many suspicions, it seems,” the new, improved king of France said.

“Ah!” I smiled. “You recognised M. d’Artagnan, then?”

“Before you called him by his name, even.”

“He is your captain of musketeers.”

“He is very devoted to _me_ ,” replied Philippe, laying a stress upon the personal pronoun.

“As faithful as a dog.” I was as ready as ever to give credit where credit was due. “But he bites sometimes. If d’Artagnan does not recognise you before the other has disappeared, rely upon d’Artagnan to the end of the world. For if he has seen nothing, he will keep his fidelity. If he sees when it is too late – well, he is a Gascon and will never admit that he has been deceived.” Deceived by _me_ , at that.

At twenty-six, Philippe Bourbon had spent all his life behind prison walls. After his old nurse and his preceptor had suddenly and sadly departed, I had brought him to safety. Concealed behind another name, he lived quite happily in the Bastille, where his every whim was catered to as long as the supply of money didn’t run out. When I finally liberated him from his confinement, the young man attached himself most tenderly to me, and I could be certain that he would make the best of monarchs for myself and for my dearest friends. I had told him that I desired the throne of Peter and that I would put him into the position of procuring it for me, and he agreed to the deal readily.

The hour of the Kingmaker was nigh: I had snuck the forgotten Bourbon into Vaux, where M. Fouquet was giving a magnificent fête for the present king, who received the attentions and admiration that were Philippe’s due. I had pointed Louis out to him: the usurper, the brother who had stolen the throne and who did not deserve to wear the royal crown. Philippe, a gentleman born and bred like his twin, educated to be grateful and willing to be led, would make a much better monarch indeed.

Night came. The usurper slept. The ceiling of his chamber opened, the vaulted dome descended, the floor swallowed Louis and closed above him to bury him in the belly of the beast of Vaux. Philippe climbed into the still-warm sheets of the deserted royal bed, while in the damp labyrinth below the deposed twin shivered from cold, wrath and terror. The imposing form of Porthos loomed over Louis, a black carriage conveyed him to Paris, the gates of the Bastille slammed shut behind him, locking him away from the eyes of the world forever.

I was back in Vaux before the first cock-crow. I entered the king’s chamber and bowed before His Majesty.

“Well, Sire, all is accomplished.”

“How?”

“Exactly as we expected.”

“Did he resist?”

“Terribly! Tears and entreaties.”

“And then?”

“A perfect stupor.”

“But at last?”

“Oh! At last, a complete victory, and absolute silence.”

All was accomplished. My king was on the throne, Fouquet was safe, Porthos was almost duke, and I had overnight risen to the position of the monarch’s most trusted counsellor. To my excessive delight, d’Artagnan had been despatched to fetch me in the morning, and he was much bewildered to find me the close confidant of the king. With the Gascon in tow, I left the new, improved Louis XIV to be dressed by his attendants and hurried to the chamber of M. Fouquet. 

I was silent and grave. D’Artagnan, for his part, was completely bewildered by such an accumulation of events.

“Well, captain, so you have brought M. d’Herblay to me,” Fouquet said to the man who had arrested him not twelve hours before.

“And something better still, monseigneur,” d’Artagnan replied.

“What is that?”

“Liberty.”

Fouquet resumed his usual serenity, attempting to interrogate me with a look, which I countered with a serene one of my own.

“Yes, you can thank M. l’Évêque de Vannes,” continued d’Artagnan, “for it is indeed to him that you owe the change that has taken place in the king.”

I smiled. As usual, d’Artagnan had hit the bull’s eye with his uncanny instinct and shrewdness.

“But you,” d’Artagnan turned to me, “you, who have become M. Fouquet’s protector and patron, can you not do something for me?”

“Anything in the wide world you like, my friend,” I replied in my calmest, most dulcet tones.

“One thing only, then, and I shall be perfectly satisfied: how on earth did you manage to become the favourite of the king, you who have never spoken to him more than twice in your life?”

“From a friend such as you are,” I told the beloved companion of my youth, “I cannot conceal anything. You think that I have seen the king only twice, whilst the fact is I have seen him more than a hundred times; only we have kept it very secret, that is all.” And at the sight of d’Artagnan’s face flushing scarlet at this revelation, I addressed M. Fouquet, who was as much surprised as the Gascon. “Monseigneur,” I resumed, “the king desires me to inform you that he is more than ever your friend, and that your beautiful fête, so generously offered by you to him, has touched him to the very heart.”

D’Artagnan slunk away, bewildered and confused, and I was free to offer my friend Fouquet the explanations that he deserved. My heart swelled with pride and with affection, for I had grown as fond of my human as Athos was fond of his. For more than fifteen years, the Surintendant had been a generous host, a liberal patron and gracious benefactor to me – not to mention a delicious snack. For his blood, the blood of a man so ambitious, so powerful, so beloved by men and women alike, was saturated with a life force that tingled on my tongue and prickled through my veins in the most invigorating manner.

At last, I could let him in on the secret: I disclosed the scheme to him. I laid it out in much details, for I had taken great pride in carefully crafting each single step and honing them to perfection, to ensure that the act of dethroning the old and crowning the new king had been swift and smooth. I looked upon the face of my friend Fouquet with shining eyes, ready to see his visage light up in unbridled joy.

Fouquet spoke in a hollow voice: “It was under my roof, then, monsieur, that you committed this crime?”

I blanched. “This _crime_?” It was apparent: Fouquet had taken leave of his senses.

“This abominable crime!” pursued Fouquet, becoming more and more excited. “This crime more execrable than an assassination! This crime dishonours my name forever and entails upon me the horror of posterity. Oh!” he exclaimed, tearing at his hair in a fit of histrionics. “Woe, woe is me!”

“Woe to the man, rather, who beneath your roof meditated the ruin of your fortune, your life,” I reminded him of the king’s order to have him arrested for embezzlement. “Do you forget that?”

“He was my guest, my _sovereign_.”

I rose, blood heaving in my veins, my mouth trembling convulsively. “Have I a man out of his senses to deal with?” I said.

“You have an honourable man to deal with,” the ungrateful mortal retorted.

“You are mad,” I informed him.

“I am a man who will prevent you consummating your crime.” Fouquet remained obstinate. “A man who would sooner die, who would kill you even, rather than allow you to complete his dishonour.”

As he spoke those words, the lunatic snatched up his sword and clenched it resolutely in his hand. I frowned. A sword thrust would not kill me, but getting pierced through by a madman would inconvenience me greatly. I thrust my hand into my vestments in search of a weapon, but my fingers encountered not the steel of my poignard, just the metal of my crucifix. This movement did not escape Fouquet, who, full of nobleness and taking great pride in his magnanimity, tossed his sword aside. He approached me so close as to touch my shoulder. “Monsieur,” he said, “I would sooner die here on the spot than survive this terrible disgrace. And if you have any pity left for me, I entreat you to take my life.”

I laughed. Taking his life! Oh, he had no idea how tempting his offer was, how utterly irresistible. His skin broke under the pressure of my fangs and his body went limp against mine. But then - the taste of his blood was suddenly disgusting to me, and bile rose in my throat. The man whose ambition had almost equalled mine, who had built an empire greater and richer even than the king’s, was turning into a pathetic worm before my eyes. His blood was no longer spiked with the flavour of daring and ardour; it flowed indolent and insipid into my mouth.

Like Athos, Fouquet had invoked honour to stop me in my steps. But unlike those of Athos, his principles and notions of honour were as feeble as his mortal body and mind. They rendered him useless to me, and useless meant less than dead. I let go of him and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, while he stared at me with the wide cow eyes of a human in thrall. His fate was no longer of any interest to me.

When he regained what wits I had left him with, he spoke; yet his words were as bland and useless as his blood. He proclaimed himself faithful to Louis, and my stomach turned. This man, whom I had called friend, planned to prostrate himself before a king who had done him wrong. He disgusted me. I ground my teeth until my jaws hurt and fought down my fangs. I had rolled the dice and Tyche had stabbed me in the back. Oh, to see him fall dead at my feet! But the taste of his skin and blood were vile to me. My hand clenched like the claw of a bird, digging into the flesh of my breast.

“Belle-Île is as much mine for you as Vaux is mine for the king,” my faithless pet was desperate to do right by me as he urged me to run. Four hours he gave me to place myself out of the king’s reach. “Go, d’Herblay, go! As long as I live, not a hair of your head shall be injured.”

“Thank you,” I said, with a cold irony of manner. Oh, how magnanimous he was, the mortal, whose blood still coated my tongue like rancid butter.

“Go at once, then, and give me your hand, before we both hasten away: you to save your life, I to save my honour.”

I withdrew from my breast the hand I had shoved there in search of my poignard. It was stained with my blood, for my nails had pierced my flesh deeply. Fouquet stared at me, horror-stricken, and then his human heart smote him with pity. He threw open his arms as if to embrace me.

“I had no arms,” I murmured, wild with wrath as the shade of Dido. And then, without touching Fouquet’s hand, I turned my head aside and stepped back a pace or two. “I don’t need arms to destroy you.” My last word was an imprecation, my last gesture a curse which my blood-stained hand seemed to invoke, as it sprinkled on Fouquet’s white face a few drops of blood with a last, parting gesture.

Out, out, down the steps, away! Away from the scene of his treason and my shame! Fouquet ordered his best horses, while I paused at the foot of the staircase which led to Porthos’ apartment. I breathed in, willing my heart to slow down, and reflected profoundly for some time, while Fouquet’s carriage left the courtyard at full gallop.

What now? What _now_? “Shall I go alone?” I muttered to myself, my thoughts running around in mad circles. “Or shall I warn Philippe? But then what? Warn Philippe, and then – do what? Take him with me? Carry this accusing witness about with me everywhere, like Athos carries his parrot? Once the secret comes out, as it indubitably will, war will follow, civil war, implacable in its nature. And… _Athos_.” My heart clenched at the thought of my godling, patient and faithful, unwavering, firm, unyielding, eternal. Waiting for me, waiting for my plans to come to fruition so that I would take him away with me as I scaled the ladder of ambitions and dreams. “It is impossible,” I concluded. “What would Athos think? Would he stand by me as I abducted a prince of Bourbon blood? Abduct him to do _what_? And yet – what will happen to the prince without me? Without me he will be utterly destroyed.” I looked up at the façade of the building towards the windows of the royal bedchamber and made my choice. “Yet who knows: let destiny be fulfilled. Philippe was condemned, and it was not I who had condemned him and locked him up in the first place. Let him remain condemned!”

Away. _Away_! Porthos was swiftly fetched, horses were saddled, d’Artagnan was embraced one last time, evaded, left behind: the parting adieu. The human would never know how close to having his throat ripped out he had come to on many occasions. My promise to Athos was sacred to me: d’Artagnan’s blood, his life were safe, protected by the seal of my promise to Athos, forever.

To Bragelonne, then. Porthos, true, honest, good Porthos flew on his steed by my side. He knew nothing, understood nothing of the intrigue into which I had entangled him. I fuelled the red fog of fume and fury that clouded my mind and senses, for I knew that, once it dispersed, my heart would bleed bitter tears for my Titan friend. Ever since his return from Greece, my affection for him had been rekindled, and something gnawed at my guts that, after half a day of deliberation, I identified as guilt and shame. Onwards, past Orléans, along the Loire, to Blois. To Bragelonne.

***

In Bragelonne, the comte de La Fère was walking in the long alley of limes in the park, accompanied by Raoul Segundo, whose conversation appeared to amuse Athos despite its repetitive character. Still, the exclamations of “Grilled Octopus!”, “Ave Jesus!” and “Sweet Louise!” that tore through the evening air told me where I should guide my steps. Porthos remained in the courtyard, where the bell which served to announce to the comte either the hour of dinner or the arrival of a visitor, was rung. The parrot, upon spotting me, fluttered up in the air, flew over my head and swooped down on Porthos, whose hair and ears he began to peck affectionately. Meanwhile, Athos strode towards me; my knees weakened and I stood motionless. Two days in the saddle had not drained me of energy, but the sight of my lover, whose serious gaze and severe mouth told me plainly that he knew something was amiss even before I told him, rendered me faint and shaky.

Athos stood before me. I fell into his embrace, and that embrace itself was a question. I lingered in the circle of his arms for as long as I dared, and then, bracing myself, I looked into his face and said: “We have not long to remain with you.”

He knew. He stood silent and still, watching me with dark eyes, even as Porthos, to whom I had lied ever since Vaux, told him all about his good fortune. Our Titanic friend believed that our mad ride from Vaux would lead us to the duchy that I had promised him in the name of the king.

I took my lover by the arm and asked Porthos’ permission to talk to Athos in private. The Titan rolled his eyes, picked up the parrot and began to tell him in a sonorous voice all about how the king had made him a duke by _brevet_. “Hades’ balls!” Raoul Segundo replied. “Jeez, _Louise_!”

“Aramis…”

“Athos,” I interrupted my lover, bracing myself for a fight. “Don’t… just don’t. I am overwhelmed as it is.”

“Very well. I won’t, then. Will you tell me what happened?”

“The conspiracy has failed, and, at this moment, I am doubtless pursued.” By the _king’s_ men, if I was lucky.

He looked at me in such a way that I was sure none of that came as a surprise. I wanted to be furious, yet I found myself deeply contrite.The ring I wore, the ring of the general of the Jesuits, meant that I had the ear and protection of the king of Spain. I had already a new name and role in mind for myself; all we had to do was come up with aliases for my two friends, and we could happily spend a few decades controlling the fates of the Iberian Peninsula and its colonies overseas.

Why, then, did chagrin weigh me down so heavily?

“What about Porthos’ duchy, then?” Athos smiled sadly, glancing at the ex-pirate, retired musketeer and failed duke over my shoulder. Poor Porthos who had enjoyed the idea of dukedom so much would be most disappointed when I told him that all was lost and we had to leave France and start a new life once again.

“Don’t.” I passed my hand over my face. “That is what causes me severest pain, it is the deepest of my wounds. I have drawn Porthos into my conspiracy because I was so sure of its infallible success. You know him – he threw himself into it, as you know he would do, with all his strength, without knowing what he was about. He is now as much compromised as myself and as completely ruined as I am, here in France.” I gave him a weak smile and read compassion in his eyes. Athos reached out and took my hand.

“Don’t worry, chyortik,” he said gently, watching his cousin who conversed with the parrot, smiling complacently. “Porthos won’t hold it against you.”

“Athos, you must know the whole story,” I said. “I owe it to you.”

“You’re scaring me, chyortik,” Athos said with his sad, ancient smile and pressed my hand. I took a deep breath and told him. He listened to my recital, pale and silent. “It was a great idea,” he admitted at last, “but a great error.”

“For which I am punished, Athos.”

“Therefore, I will not tell you what I think.”

I squeezed his hand and hung my head. “Go on, say it.”

“It is a crime.”

“A capital crime. I _know_ it is. Lèse-majesté.”

He sighed again, shaking his head.

“What would you advise me to do?” His dejected air, the sense of great tragedy that hung around him were beginning to rouse me. I had come to him hunted and repentant; I had not expected him to make me feel even worse. His mocking smile, his admonishments, even his ‘I told you so’s’ I had been prepared for. This… sadness unsettled me and made my skin prickle. “Success, as I have told you, was certain.”

“M. Fouquet is an honest man,” Athos continued in the same melancholy tone.

“And I am a fool for having so ill-judged him,” I said. “Is that what you think? Oh, the wisdom of gods! How much greater than the wisdom of man, the millstone that grinds the world and that is one day stopped by a grain of sand which has fallen between its wheels.”

Athos smiled. “Say by a diamond, Aramis.” He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “The thing is done. What do you plan now?”

“Take Porthos away. I shouldn’t have dragged him into this cabal, this is not his world. And,” I seized his hand again and pressed it to my lips. “Ask you to join me,” I whispered hotly. “The era of the comte de La Fère is drawing to an end, Athos. I’m not going to ask you to come with me now, for I know that you can’t leave your estates and the people who depend on you and sneak out like a thief in the night.”

“Don’t be silly, Aramis-”

“No! Please, Athos.” I shook my head. “Let me fix this mess.”

“Very well. Where will you go?” He smiled. “If you want me to join you, I need to know where.”

“Belle-Île, at first.”

“Ah! Your bat-lair!” The insolent heathen smirk curled the corners of his mouth and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“It is an impregnable place of refuge,” I said. “With easy access to the sea and to a vessel that can carry us to Spain, or to England. Or even to the New World. Porthos would like that.”

“Especially after the king will confiscate his property here.”

“His estates in the Normandy are protected. The duchesse de Longueville is keeping an eye on them.”

“Of course! I forgot. You showed great foresight there, Aramis.”

“All is provided for. And once in Spain, I know how to ensure the patronage of Philip IV and restore Porthos to favour.”

“You have credit with everyone,” Athos smirked.

“Much. And,” I kissed his hand again, “all of it at the service of my friends.”

Athos’ eyes grew ebony-black. “Thank you, my angel.”

“Always. Come and join us in Belle-Île. I guarantee upon my honour that there will be war between France and Spain in less than a month. Do you remember the battles we fought side by side, Athos? We can do that again, throw ourselves into the fray. The rush, the blood, Athos. We can have it all. I know of an arrangement that will bring greatness to all three of us if we curry favours with the Spanish king. What do you think?”

“No, Aramis. I will come with you to Spain, of course I will, but don’t count on me in your schemes with the Habsburgs. For my part, I prefer having something to reproach the king with, rather than be indebted to him. It is a pride natural to my race to assume a superiority over royal races.”

“Then give me two things, Athos,” I whispered. “First, your absolution.”

“Always! I grant it gladly, chyortik: if you really wished to avenge the weak and oppressed against the oppressor.”

“That is sufficient for me,” I said, glad that my face was concealed from his penetrating gaze by the falling dusk.

“And what is the second thing?” He leaned in and his breath stirred my hair as he spoke.

“Horses.”

He laughed softly. “Consider it done… Anything else, Aramis?”

My mouth went dry. “ _Please_.”

He was unbearably tender with me that night. His fingers were tangled in my hair as his body moulded itself to mine. There was no time. Porthos – good, honest Porthos, who lay snoring in a guest chamber – and I couldn’t risk to linger in Bragelonne. There was no time, and the little time that we had before we would exchange adieux in the morning we had to use to the fullest.

“Aramis,” he gasped, screwing his hips into the crevice between my thighs. Droplets of sweat and of blood ran down his neck and I clamped my mouth to his shoulder and drilled my teeth into the rock-hard muscle. Above me, against me, around me, Athos’ body convulsed. He pulled in his knees, forcing himself deeper between my thighs, and I wrapped my legs around his hips, panting into the heat of his skin.

“ _Please_.” He moaned and shivered like a man in the grip of fever. “Aramis, let me-”

“Anything,” I croaked out. I couldn’t speak, my throat clogged with unshed tears. Why was he so honourable, my godling? He thrust his hand between our both bodies and his slickened fingers slipped inside. If he wasn’t so noble… If he hadn’t built himself a life, _this_ life, we could have gone away together, like we had done so many times in the past. But the comte de La Fère was a seigneur of the land, he was the patron upon whom hundreds of people depended, and he would not run away under the cover of night.

His hot breath against my ear, my cheek, panting into my mouth as he kissed me deeply, pouring his soul into me and sparking something inside me to life. A conscience. My conscience, that lay dormant for most of my interminable existence and that nothing but his words, his touch, his looks could ever rouse. I had deceived Porthos; I had dissembled and lied – but not to him. Never to him. Between my legs, his cock throbbed hot and insistent, and Athos raised his head to look at me as he pushed himself inside me. I groaned as air left my lungs, and lay faint and dizzy beneath him, around him, melting into him with each desperate, shuddering breath.

Athos pulled back, and I yanked him in with my legs around his hips. His blood on my lips and tongue, potent and rich, and that beautiful, generous mouth open in a gasp. He was staring at me with eyes like stars. “My chyortik,” he murmured, cradling my face in his palm. “My Aramis.”

 _Don’t let me go_.

I couldn’t say it. He didn’t _want_ me to go. He wanted to keep me here, keep me safe with his body and with his love: that all-encompassing love that tethered me to my own humanity. He would let me stay at Bragelonne for as long as I wanted, and when my pursuers caught up with me, he would shield me with his breast. He would murder the king’s men for me – my fangs dropped at the thought of all that virility, all those hunters, all that pumped-up blood spilling under the thrusts of his sword, under the slashes of my blade, under the blows of Porthos’ fists. The soil of Bragelonne would turn to swamp, fertilised by the blood and flesh of men; sacrificial slaughter, such as had been blessed countless times by the gods of the Ancients and the God of the desert.

He saw my fangs flash between my lips and twisted his neck. His vein broke easily under the gentlest of pressures, and Athos groaned and fucked himself deeper inside me. Both hands on my hips, he pulled me in, his knees under my pelvis, cushioning me like a cradle as he rocked deeper and deeper into me. That magnificent body curled into mine; that sweetest of nectars running down my throat, into my veins, into my heart. So much _light_. Burst of light on my tongue and behind my eyelids. Celestial light flooding my mind. Fireworks erupting in my groin with every slide of his thick cock that pushed me open. I drank him greedily, immoderately, and he gave himself to me with primal abandon. Never had he been more human and more divine than that night, when he fucked me like a man in the agonies of death, strength draining rapidly as his blood gushed into my mouth.

“ _Don’t stop._ ”

“ _Never._ ”

His heartbeat, rapid yet faint, knocked against my ribcage. My own heart sped up in sympathy, yet my own body thrummed with celestial energy that I had taken from him. Between our bodies, sweat mingled with semen and frothed filthily even as we found strength to fuck each other again, and again, one more time, until my vision blurred, my cock hurt and Athos passed out in my arms, clutching a fistful of my hair in his hand and still half-hard against my arse.

He lay in a deep swoon, half-sleep, half-death, when I got up before the first cock-crow. I watched him as I dressed: the noble profile, the bloodied neck, the pulse points in his throat, his elbows, his groin. I didn’t dare kiss him for he would wake up under the touch of my mouth. Instead, I took up a pen and wrote a few lines, signing them with nothing but an imprint of my blood-stained lips.


	4. Chapter 4

**Bragelonne, September 1665**

Aramis had always left in the night, sneaking out of my bed, his swift flitter-feet like cat-paws upon shingled rooftops. Why then, did I feel so discombobulated by this particular departure? The horses that I had promised him and Porthos were also missing, at least reassuring me that they had gone of their own volition.

 _Do not follow me, my love,_ his cryptic note said. _We will be together soon. Wait for me._

This was ridiculous and, moreover, not part of our plan. The three of us were supposed to quit France together. I let my fingers pass over the parchment, where my own dried blood left an imprint of his kiss.

The following days were slow to pass. I sought answers in meditation, but found neither inner peace nor any insight to my lover’s plans. On the fifth morning after his departure, I heard a ragged coughing fit from below and remembered Grimaud. My celestial guardian had grown old and weary. Our adventures during the Restoration did him no favors: while fire and smoke could not harm me, Grimaud’s vessel was fully human and susceptible to the gradual ramifications of smoke inhalation.

I found him doubled over, attempting to suppress the cough that wracked his frail form. Upon feeling my hand on his shoulder, he pocketed his handkerchief, but not before I noticed the maroon specks of blood upon the wrinkled cotton.

“My friend, you should stay in bed today,” I suggested, guiding him back towards his cot. I called for my other domestics and asked for the fire to be stoked and for fresh broth to be prepared, and then I removed his boots myself and tucked his legs under the covers.

“Kyrios,” his voice sounded tired and savaged by the cough, “you shouldn’t…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I spoke, attempting to keep my voice steady. “This is the least I can do, all things considered.”

I have lost my Grigori many times before, too many to count, yet it never sat easily with me. This ancient being, this guardian angel, who flitted like a ghost from vessel to vessel, always to be at my side - without him, I was lost. Without him, I was barely myself.

I sat by his bedside and fed him the broth, until he gave me one of his impertinent looks and pushed the half-empty bowl away.

“Kyrios…” His aged, bony hand brushed against mine. “I always worry about you when I leave.” I tried to smile and reassure him, but his stern eyes fixed on me with Olympian stubbornness. “You are very foolish, Athos, son of Zeus.”

“Think well - do you want those to be your last words to me in this corporeal form, M. Grimaud?”

“You always run headlong towards your own death. That’s why you need me. That’s why your Father sent me to you.”

“You’ve served me well, my friend,” I pressed my fingers around his. “You can rest, knowing I’m not as foolish as you think.” I smiled and saw a mirroring smile on his dry, thin lips. I took out my own handkerchief and used it to mop his perspiring brow. His breath rattled inside his ravaged lungs, as his vessel struggled through its final journey. “This has been your most insolent incarnation, my dear Grigori,” I smiled through my own tears. “I doubt you can be even more formidable in your coming form.”

“Thank you…” he sighed, squeezing my hand, “Kyrios… that means a lot to me.”

I lifted my hand and let it rest upon his chest, choking back the emotion that overwhelmed me. “Does it hurt, Grimaud?”

“My body?”

“No, I mean, each time you go. And come back?”

“Do not worry about me, Kyrios. I’m sure you yourself have been through much worse than this - the shedding of a mortal coil.” He was seized by another coughing fit, which I held him through, feeling the pressure building up between his frail ribs. “I will return... to you... as soon as I can.”

“I know you will,” I reassured him. He always found me - he would find me again. And, doubtlessly, be an insufferable pest.

He appeared as if about to say something when the sound of numerous horse hooves roused me from my vigil over my guardian.

“Horsemen, Kyrios?”

“I’ll go see who it is,” I rose.

“No doubt, they come looking for... your flittermouse.” His tone was both resigned yet mocking. His words were becoming labored. “You always... always run... towards those... you should flee from.”

I squeezed his hand, promised to come right back, and proceeded towards the vestibule, which was rapidly filling with armed soldiers.

“What is the meaning of this?” I asked the man who appeared to be their leader.

“Are you M. le comte de La Fère?” the man inquired, respectfully.

“Yes, I am called that,” I replied and the man bowed towards me.

“M. le comte, I have an order from M. Colbert in the King’s name for the arrest of the chevalier d’Herblay and the baron du Vallon. These are friends of yours, _n’est-ce pas_?”

“They are, but you will not find them here.”

“Nevertheless, M. le comte, I’d appreciate your cooperation whilst we search the premises.”

“You’re welcome to have a look,” I sneered, “But try not to make too much noise. My maître d’hôtel is very ill, and I’d hate for your men to disturb him.”

The man bowed again and made a sign to the others, who scattered all over the château and the gardens, looking up and down, as if expecting Aramis to descend from the trees. I bit my lips and pressed my nails into the palms of my hands. It was a very thorough search indeed, I noted, as the men paid special attention to the flower beds.

“M. le capitain,” I addressed the man, who, despite his fine manners, had neglected to introduce himself. “What exactly are your men searching for?”

“Freshly dug dirt, Monsieur.”

“Freshly dug… dirt?”

“Graves, Monsieur.”

“You think I buried my friends, sir?”

“No, sir, I think your _friends_ ,” he paused to emphasize the word, “may have hidden themselves quite well.”

“This is insupportable,” I pronounced. “What kind of a joke is this? Either produce this order from M. Colbert, or leave my house immediately!”

The man bowed once more and produced two pieces of paper from his doublet, which he then hastened to present to me. “My apologies, M. le comte, I was indeed supposed to deliver you this letter, along with the order.”

My hand trembled as I took the papers from the soldier’s grasp. I passed a perfunctory glance over the order from Colbert: it bore no surprises. The second letter, however, gave me pause. It was written in a familiar hand that I had not seen in quite some time and thought I may never see again.

 _Monsieur le comte,_ Marie de Rohan, the duchess de Chevreuse wrote to me, _As an homage to that great race of which you are a scion and in remembrance of the love I once bore for your person, I would do you this one last favour. You have always been so generous to me, accept this then, my parting gift. Our Wallachian friend has betrayed me, and his machinations have doomed me to a mortal grave and an uncertain future. I fear we shall never meet again in this world. I will die, but in doing so, I wish to take that demon with me. The men bearing this letter, as you might have observed, are not merely in the service of the king. They are hunters of a different kind of prey, and they have answered my call to vengeance. They will find him, and they will kill him with fire. I think you will agree, my old friend, that even René d’Herblay would not be able to rise from his ashes. But if you get to him first, as you doubtlessly will attempt, if you do find him, you must take him away from France, never to return here, either one of you. Go now, Athos, and take him with you._

The letter was signed formally as _Marie de Rohan-Montbazon_.

“Aramis, what have you done?” I muttered as I read and reread the letter over and over again. Marie - dying a mortal’s death? Marie - trying to kill Aramis? What did any of this have to do with his failed plan to replace Louis with his twin?

“We find no trace of them here,” one of the men reported back in, tearing me away from my third read-through of Marie’s letter. “But there are two sets of hoofprints, heading west. They look a few days old, captain.”

“After them! And don’t spare the horses,” the captain made another gesture, redeploying his hunters back to horse. “M. le comte, our apologies for the inconvenience.” He bowed again and backed out of the vestibule with a quixotical smile.

I stood, clutching Marie’s letter in my hand until the kicked-up dust in the front courtyard settled. And then I ran back into Grimaud’s little room.

“Grimaud, fortify yourself, my friend. Something’s happened. We need to leave immediately.” I approached the bed. “How can you sleep with all that hullabaloo?”

I bit my lips, looking down upon his wan, pale face, his closed lids, and his sunken cheekbones. He did look asleep. He seemed at peace.

“Oh, M. Grimaud,” I sank down upon his narrow cot and pressed my guardian’s hand to my parched lips. “Hurry back,” I whispered into the parchment-thin skin that had not yet lost all of its warmth.

***

Grimaud’s body lay buried in the Bragelonne crypt and I slept, soaked in sweat and shaken to the core. It was usually a brief separation, but a necessary one. I did not like to dwell on the specifics of it, but I knew a suitable vessel would be found, and my guardian would rejoin me, new attributes and all. Still, the passing of my Grigori always pierced me with melancholy and dread.

In the morning, I could at last follow Aramis. He had told me to wait, but the arrival of Marie’s hunters changed things. But where would I go? Would he even still be on Belle-Île?

My sleep was restless. I woke up several times shaking as if from fever. When, at last, I descended deep into the realm of Morpheus, I drifted for a while. Until the fog of my mind cleared and suddenly I beheld it: Belle-Île.

I seemed to move through the air as if through time. I watched Helios make a full circle in his chariot around the Earth, and then night fell, and in its darkness a gaping grotto opened up to my gaze.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

“Locmaria,” a voice next me replied and I looked over to see the burnished gold of Apollo’s helmet.

“What am I doing here?”

“Watching,” my brother replied. Apollo did not share his gift of prophecy lightly and I concentrated all my faculties so that I could see through the surrounding murkiness.

“Oh gods,” my knees trembled. “It’s Aramis.”

“And Porthos.”

“What are they doing?”

“Going into the grotto, it appears,” my brother shrugged. “Did you know, in the days when Belle-Île was still called Kalonese, this place was a pagan Celtic temple?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He smiled, but did not reply. I watched as Porthos walked towards the grotto, followed closely by Aramis. They appeared to speak of something, but I could not make out their words. At last, Aramis turned towards me, his eyes focusing on my own as if he could see me. The wind blew his long hair backwards and billowed his cloak into the night sky like a long standard. He bared his fangs, as if threatening an invisible foe, and then slipped into the darkness of the grotto.

Behind me, I heard the barking of approaching dogs.

“What is that? What is happening? Tell me!” My hand grasped my divine brother’s wrist and he humored my touch, not drawing away. God of Oracles, God of Plague. Was he here to help me or to hurt me?

“It’s your nymph’s _chasseurs_ ,” he replied cooly. “The dogs are on a scent,” he added.

There was no fox. The scent the dogs had been following had been the scent of my friends. One by one they filed into the grotto and there their barks turned to whines and then felt silent.

“The hunters are coming,” I breathed and my feet propelled me towards the grotto, when suddenly I was halted by a hand upon each shoulder. I turned back and saw Ares standing next to Apollo.

“You cannot go in, brother,” War spoke, “you are not actually here.”

“But you are?”

 “I have been summoned - your lover has sacrificed a veritable kennel on this sacred ground.”

“You’ve come to help them?” I grasped at his silken, white cloak in supplication. “Tell me you will help them!”

“What do you fear, Athos?” Ares asked.

“The worst,” I replied, remembering Marie’s letter. The hunters that she sent knew who was inside the grotto. They knew that normal weapons could not kill them. Their torches lit up the night sky menacingly. _They will kill him with fire_ , Marie had written. “Please,” I pleaded, “If you do not help them, then let me.”

“Wait,” Apollo said, and time and air moved around me again.

The men had gone inside the grotto and their blood too spilled onto the holy pagan ground. How many of them lay slain inside, felled by a Titan’s blow or revenant’s bite? I did not know. But there didn’t seem to be a shortage of reinforcements. I counted over seventy just as I stood there, transfixed, a god at each side. Each god to guard me, not to guide me.

“Watch,” Apollo whispered in my ear and then, to my utter horror, an explosion shook the island.

“No!” I screamed, lunging towards the cave, but each one of them held me by the arm. “Aramis!” I screamed until my voice went hoarse, until the horror left me, and became something else. “Aramis!”

I broke free of their hold and ran inside. The grotto was collapsing around me. The air was suffused with the stench of burned flesh and human blood. On the other side of the isle, the sun was rising again, and I saw Aramis silhouetted against the opening of the mouth of the cave. Between the fire and the sea, he stood mute and immobile, and I could not call out to him. And then, with a thunderous rumble, the mountain collapsed, burying Porthos beneath it. An inferno blazed around me and smoke filled my lungs. The tongues of the flames licked at my skin and I shut my eyes.

Just then, my brothers must have had found me again, for I was shaken by their touch. I was no longer in the grotto, no longer burning or suffocating, but my face was streaked with tears.

“Did all this happen?” I gasped.

“Not yet,” Apollo replied.

“You still have time to stop it,” Ares added, “if you ride fast and hard.”

“Tell me what to do!”

“Do not let them go into the grotto,” my brothers spoke with one voice.

I came out of the dream, the vision, choking on my own breath. I leapt out of bed, grasping nothing but my cloak and sword on the way down the stairs. The saddle bags still held loaded pistols. I took some money to exchange for post horses. The entire preparation had taken me less than ten minutes, but then I stopped in my tracks as I bent down to tighten the stirrups. My hair fell into my face. My hair - which had apparently turned completely white overnight.

 _Aramis_ , I thought, _wait for me_. Now that I was certain danger was imminent, I could remain inert no longer. I was coming to him.

***

I rode as fast as my steed could carry me, wishing that I had been riding Pegasus instead. I neither slept nor ate, stilling the mortal part of me, and relying solely on whatever divinity my body possessed. Aramis had always been sure that divinity was inexhaustible. For him, I prayed this be the case and drove my horses onwards towards Vannes, towards the ocean.

The Quiberon peninsula stood bereft of boats. I lifted my eyes to the skies and saw a murder of crows over my head, teeming in the twilight before the dawn.

“I need to get across,” I said to a local fisherman, who did not take too kindly to being woken up at such an ungodly hour.

“You and the rest of the King’s army,” the man shrugged with the kind of impertinence that reminded me of Grimaud. I took my riding crop and struck him.

“I _need_ to get across. Perhaps this will motivate you to help me!”

Among the dark waves that the dawn would soon turn viridian, the rocks of Belle-Île and the walls of Fouquet’s citadel loomed and beckoned. Somewhere, on the other side of the island, the part that the locals called Locmaria, was a sacred grotto that I had to prevent my lover and my friend from entering.

“Where are you, Aramis?” I asked the seas and the crows replied with ugly, guttural cries. I had suddenly understood why the English had called it an “unkindness” of ravens.

A black feather sailed down on the gentle breeze to land before my feet.

“Damn it, Eris, I’m not in the mood,” I growled towards the skies.

 _Come see,_ the waters sang out at me. For a moment, I contemplated tearing off my clothes and swimming across the Bay of Biscay and out into the open Atlantic. _Come join us. Dance with us._

Marie’s kin would not help. There was no hope to look for salvation from the water, nor from the sky. Deep beneath my feet, in Tartarus, the Titans slept too.

“I have a vessel,” the fisherman admitted, at last. “It’s hidden. I did not want the other soldiers to take it. My boats are my livelihood, Monsieur, I beg you.”

“You will be well paid,” I promised. “You will be even better paid if you hurry the hell up,” and I tossed the remains of my purse into the man’s hands. “I have to get across.”

“I will call someone stronger to row,” the man suggested.

“I will row myself,” I replied. “Give me your oars.”

The fisherman’s stupefied eyes followed me for some time as I headed out to sea in his shabby dinghy. My mouth felt dessicated and my stomach had stopped gnawing at itself hours ago, but my arms did not fail me, the oars slicing through the waters like fins, defying the oncoming waves. Behind me, in the East, Helios was rising in his glorious chariot, and over in the West, Selene had still not hidden her pale face. Their sister Eos, or Aurora as she was called by the Romans, colored the skies crimson and my heart trembled in my chest.

At last, my boat hit land, and I lept out onto terra firma, just as a powerful explosion reverberated throughout the island. My gaze turned first to Locmaria and then towards the blazing sun in the morning sky. The island stood shrouded in mist and only the frightened sea gulls echoed the shuddering of the earth.

I stole a horse from the first rider I saw and put my spurs to it, leaving its rightful owner in the dust.

It was too late. I had come too late. I shouldn’t have stayed to bury Grimaud - the Grigori’s empty vessel. What had been the point of that vigil? But no, I had not given my Grigori proper honors last time, on Rhodes, and look what happened then. It was impossible, unthinkable to do the same. And besides, why would my brothers have given me that vision if it was only to have me arrive too late?

Deep in my bones, I felt Eris laughing.

“Athos, my friend!” Another rider blocking my way who inexplicably turned out to be d’Artagnan.

“Where are they?”

His palms on my arms. His face looming in front of mine, like a spectre.

“They are gone, Athos.” His voice so soft. “My god, how did you even get here? You look...”

“Gone? No, they cannot be gone.” I moved him out of my way. “The grotto. Where is it?”

“What’s left of it. The whole thing had been blown to smithereens. No one could have survived that.”

“Except them.”

“No, my friend. Not even Porthos and Aramis.”

“No, you don’t understand. They can’t die. They _don’t_ die.” Before my eyes, a mountain lay in smoke. “Aramis…”

 _Even René d’Herblay would not be able to rise from his ashes._ Marie’s words haunted me.

I walked towards what was left of the mouth of the cave. I recognized it from my vision. The smell of burned flesh and soil gorged on human blood only too evident to my senses. The stones were black from flames and blocked my way. Something shimmered under my feet, and I bent down to pick up a diamond crucifix. The gift of the Bourbon nymph. Had she too abandoned him? Had all Ondines?

My hand touched the heavy stones piled before me and felt the remains of the inferno. “Aramis,” I repeated, willing him to appear. _Don’t leave me, my flittermouse. Don’t go._

“You must not blame the dead, my friend,” d’Artagnan’s voice sounded behind me. “Let us not speak ill of him now.”

“No,” I repeated. “No, he isn’t dead.”

“They both went into the grotto, Athos, and no one has come out. The mountain lies in ruins. I know, I know how much this hurts… but…”

“You don’t know. You can’t.”

“Athos…”

I squeezed the crucifix in my hand until it cut into my palm and then my blood fell onto the stones of Locmaria. _Come to me, Aramis._ He always found me. He always, always came for me. Even in my watery grave in Poseidon’s realm, the beating of those leathery wings followed me still. On wings of Thanatos himself, he would fly to me.

He had to. He _must_.

D’Artagnan’s arms were around me, above me was the clouded sky. I had not realized I had fallen.

“Mordioux! Athos, take heart, my friend. I cannot lose you today, as well.”

I looked up at the Gascon and for the first time since we met allowed my mind to contemplate the fact that he may have truly loved me. No longer a boy, no, he hadn’t been a boy for many decades. He had grown into a man. I think he had tried to be a good man. He had loved me, he had trusted me.

“I am strong against everything, d’Artagnan, except the death of those I love,” I said. It was the closest I would ever come to telling him the whole truth.

My blood fell on the stones and Aramis did not come.

“They can’t be dead,” I repeated. Helios above and the Titans below wouldn’t allow it. Nature wouldn’t stand for it. Hell itself should open up and prove me right. “They can’t die.”

“I know,” d’Artagnan muttered, his hand combing through my ashen hair. “I’m so sorry. I know.”

“Father,” I spoke to Zeus, “save him.”

D’Artagnan muttered a prayer which struck me as sincere. But it was too late. Too late to save Aramis, too late to save Porthos. Too late to save me.

I cried out as the first string of my heart burst and d’Artagnan hollered for help. I laughed through my tears. Last time, the doctor helped by bleeding me to death. This time… this time, Aramis was gone and my Grigori wasn’t there to resurrect me. This time, it would all be over. I was finally leaving _samsara_.

“Stay with me,” the Gascon had said.

I wanted to speak. I wanted to tell him, before I died and walked through the gates of Elysium for all eternity, that he had done well, in the end. I was proud to have called him my friend.

Instead, I whispered words meant only for my beloved, “I’m coming. Wait for me.”

_Wait for me._

_Aramis. I will find you._

_Wait._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are providing a bucket for your tears:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> And especially for Deiseach, here you go, babe:
> 
>  


	5. Chapter 5

**Gulf of Gascony, September 1665**

A pack of dogs tore into the grotto. A pack of dogs lay dead. A troop of men tore into the grotto. A troop of men lay dead. The cave of Locmaria had beheld more than one human sacrifice accomplished in its mystic depths, that night it beheld many more. The blood of men and beasts saturated the sand, it trickled down through the cracks in the rocks, down into the earth, into the water. Into Tartarus. Into Hell.

The Old Ones awoke. The sacred vapours rising from the depths enveloped Porthos’ form, and he reverted to his Titanic self. Only a few men lay on the ground with their throats torn. More than eighty lay with their skulls crashed, for they were smote by the fists of the Titan.

Blood and fire. The ancient ritual of death and rebirth. Explosion that shook the rock upon which all stood and the rocks of the ceiling. The Titan holding up the vault above our heads like Atlas himself, a giant among granite giants, heaving boulders on his arms and shoulders. The monolith that brought him to his knees. The block sank, the arms stiffened, the extended shoulders sank, wounded and torn, the rocks continued to collapse. “ _Too heavy!_ ”

Then: silence. Nothing more. Porthos was no more. The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulchre which God had built about him to his measure.

 

***

The sea. _Always_ the sea. The endless expanse of grey under grey skies. The canoe heaved and rocked across the dreaded Gulf of Gascony, so rife with storm; and yet – such calm while at the mercy of the waves. The superstitious Bretons at the oars looked on trembling: the icy calm, the silence, the gleaming eyes of a lynx, so adept at seeing at night. The darkness that brought more clarity than the light day. The gleaming black eyes fixed upon the depth of the ocean, illumined by the flashes of Greek fire erupting on the pursuing ship. The Bishop of Vannes, the friend of the king, all-knowing and all-powerful, leaning over the side, dipping long white fingers in the green limpid waters of the sea to which he turned with smiles as to a friend.

Pursuers again. Pursuers more terrible than the king’s men, for they knew what they were chasing. The man back in the grotto, a noble fool whose blood spilled down my throat as his words spilled out of his mouth. _“M. d'Herblay is not one of those people who can be taken when and where you please.”_ He had been given orders by a woman who knew. _“If he were dead, she would not be satisfied with anything less than his head, to satisfy her he would never speak again.”_

Dead and decapitated at sea. A body thrown to the waves, where Ondinekind danced a merry jig with the morgens of Bretagne and cackled like maenads. That was to be my fate if the pursuers’ ship were to gain on me.

Unless… unless…

I closed my eyes and let my hand hang over the side of the boat, fingers trailing through the churning waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The Bretons said the city of Ys had been swallowed by the sea: an underwater Gomorrah ruled by the sinful, beautiful Dahut. A hand reached out from the depth, fingers brushed against mine. I opened my eyes and looked into the fathomless depth, into eyes that kindled, a brief flash of light, a thrust straight through my heart.

The Bishop of Vannes was lost, but the men who had entrusted their lives to me: they would live. My honour compelled me; I would not take innocents down with me.

“Surrender,” I ordered the Bretons at the oars. “Accept.”

“We accept,” repeated the sailors. “But what security do we have?”

“The word of a gentleman,” said the officer of the pursuing ship. “By my rank and by my name I swear that all except M. le Chevalier d’Herblay shall have their lives spared. I am lieutenant of the king’s frigate the ‘Pomona’, and my name is Louis Constant de Pressigny.”

The _king’s_ frigate.

I smiled.

I drew myself up, away from the dancing waves, away from the hollow depths, into the boat, into the light.

The Bishop of Vannes seized the rope ladder, walked straight up to the commander, with a firm step, looked at him earnestly, made a sign to him with his hand, a mysterious and unknown sign at sight of which the officer turned pale, trembled, and bowed his head. Without a word, the Bishop of Vannes, the king’s friend, the successor of the poor Franciscan monk, then raised his hand to the eyes of the commander and showed him the collet of a ring he wore on the ring-finger of his left hand. And while making this sign the General of the Jesuits, draped in cold and haughty majesty, had the air of an emperor giving his hand to be kissed.

 

***

**Bragelonne, 1665**

Days passed. Weeks maybe. Maybe months. Time has no meaning. A shadow flew across the lands on leathery wings. The king of Spain died of a sudden, exsanguinating disease, and the leaves in the gardens of Bragelonne were sapped of colour and moisture overnight.

A shadow had arrived in Bragelonne. That Garden Eden, that paradise on Earth, the bucolic idyll where tulips and jasmine flourished, where peaches and apples were sweeter than anywhere else in France, had been cast into darkness.

A shadow crept into the château on silent cat-feet, like a mare in the night, gliding along walls, flittering from corner to corner, like swirls of mist, like vapour rising from the bog. The midnight hour struck, the hour of the dead. Death’s skeletal fingers had enclosed the heart of Bragelonne in a suffocating grip and it ceased to beat. All was silent, all was still. Darkness and silence, like the inside of a bell whose clapping heart had broken in two. The bells of Bragelonne had spoken that night, high up in the belfry of the church, softly, tremulously, high overhead, Père Auguste and her sisters had sung an elegy. “Tin-tin-tin,” cried Speciosa in her silvery treble; “tan-tan,” answered Sabaoth; “bim, bam, bim, bam,” sang Epiphany; “bom,” bellowed René d’Illiers.

Their great bronze maws were silent now. Nothing stirred in church and graveyard, not a breath, not a sigh. In Bragelonne, a man held vigil: a solitary figure wandered the grounds like a sleep-walker, a night-walker, a _wiedergänger_ himself, for he walked, he stood up, again and again, even though he was human, even though he was _mortal_ , even though he had no right to live while the immortal had died.

Something stirred in the shadows: a shade more than a shape. Something extended fingers like talons and teeth like diamonds in the dark. A whisper, a wail of a condemned soul, the shriek of the Ankou. The man shuddered and lifted his head to the mercurial skies, attempting to penetrate the darkness with his Gascon cat-eyes. “An owl,” he muttered to himself, chewing on the stalk of a flower that he had decapitated in the gardens.

The shadow trembled with rage. The shadow _was_ rage.

It howled with laughter at the Gascon’s shrewdness. _The cry of the owl_ he had heard. The Bretons knew the owl for what it was, _Labous an Ankou_. The Death Bird. For it was Ankou himself who stalked the gardens in the Gascon’s wake, the henchman of death, the graveyard watcher, the last of the dead. Concealed in a black cloak with a hat that hid his face, he waited to harvest the soul of the mortal who had stolen his grief.

How _dared_ d’Artagnan hold vigil by Athos’ grave. The human cried over the dead body of the god and called him ‘friend’. Dust was he, and to dust shall he return. Dust and blood, the blood of virility and life, the thud-thud-thud of d’Artagnan’s heart as it bled over the death of his idol.

My fangs were like diamonds. My mouth brimmed over with blood. My tongue, my lips jagged and bitten to shreds as the Bishop of Vannes stalked his prey in the night, round and round, in circles, in spirals around the chapel where the mortal prayed. A sacred circle around hallowed ground that the demon could not penetrate. The church of the One God had never locked me out.

The chapel where my true God lay in state was impenetrable. The old promise; the blood-crime that bound us together and the invocation of friendship and honour: Athos was gone, but the seal that bound me to him was unbreakable. The General of the Jesuits was powerless here, on the soil hallowed by the pagan godling’s august majesty.

Dawn broke, shadows dispersed, the weeping tailed off, the funeral guests departed. He would be forgot soon, the last of his line, the last comte de La Fère, the last son of Zeus.

Buried in a tomb of stone, like the ancient kings, like Porthos, the last of the Titans. The Bishop of Vannes glided towards the chapel alone, trailing the tails of his black coat behind him like the folded wings of Discord. D’Artagnan’s departure had broken the seal, for no blood would be spilled on hallowed ground now that the Gascon was gone. An echo trapped between the stone walls, the last adieux cried and whispered here at the grave of the best of men. Endless, mindless repeats, like the words of the parrot, croaked by the disembodied voice of the Oread.

 _Grimaud_. I crossed myself as I passed the grave of the guardian and read the epitaph. _ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν_. _Stranger, Bear Word_. The Olympian _δοῦλος_ , free at last from the shackles that bound him to his Κύριος.

The cold stone of the tomb, and upon it, a body. I reached out and touched icy fingers to the still-warm breast. Soft grey plumage, beneath it the ribcage, inside it the broken heart of a faithful pet. Had his love for Athos been greater than mine? For my heart did not break. It rattled in my breast still, and I thrust my hand into my vestments, clawing at my skin and flesh until hot blood spurted forth. The dead eyes, the open beak, I had seen it all before: harbingers of doom and of centuries of misery. _Something_ was different. I seized the bird with both hands and tossed its body aside. The head sat on my palm like that of John the Baptist on a platter. I showed him my teeth and threw him to the ground. The tomb, the tomb, where my godling slept his last, eternal sleep.

 _Wait for me_ , I whispered as I crawled inside. His hair was white like it had been in Paris, but it was not powder that had dimmed its lustre. It was Aramis that had broken his heart. That heart, that heart, so tender, so noble, so full of love and compassion, it was as cold now as the body. I had killed him, and his love for me trickled out in the Elysian Fields.

 _Wait for me._ I curled around him, one hand tangled in his white hair, the other pressed to his cold, dead heart. The pulse-point beneath my lips was dead. My heart could not break, but would it stop when I lay here entombed, turning to stone as he turned to dust? I felt nothing, heard nothing, as _nihil_ filled my head and souls. The last lights went out.

 

***

**Bragelonne, 1673**

Light trickled in through chinks in my skull. Tiny pinpricks of light began to erupt in my mind, and then – footsteps. I didn’t raise my head. I lay with the dead, breathing death, tasting death, summoning death with every fibre of my being.

The tomb opened and light gushed in. A tidal wave of light, agonising, suffocating, drowning out the tranquil nihil and flooding my souls with rage. Beneath me, the remnants of my once-proud godling.

Above me, the pasty, bloated visage of the homunculus. “Master,” he croaked. “Your Excellency! Your Greatness! I’ve found you at last! My life is drawing to an end. I beg you: bless me and grant me a soul!”

His life _was_ drawing to an end. My fangs flashed, my claws extended, my body coiled and sprang. He fell to his knees before his master, the Bishop of Vannes, and received the Last Rites.

 

***

**Maastricht, June 1673**

M. d’Artagnan set out commanding a body of twelve thousand men, cavalry, and infantry, with which he was ordered to take the different places which form knots of that strategic network called La Frise. Never was an army conducted more gallantly to an expedition. The officers knew that their leader, prudent and skilful as he was brave, would not sacrifice a single man, nor yield an inch of ground without necessity. He had the old habits of war, to live upon the country, keeping his soldiers singing and the enemy weeping. The captain of the king’s musketeers knew his business well. Never were opportunities better chosen, coups-de-main better supported, errors of the besieged more quickly taken advantage of.

The army commanded by d’Artagnan took twelve small places within a month. He was engaged in besieging the thirteenth, which had held out five days. The pioneers and labourers were, in the army of this man, a body full of ideas and zeal, because their commander treated them like soldiers, knew how to render their work glorious, and never allowed them to be killed if he could help it. It should have been seen with what eagerness the marshy glebes of Holland were turned over. Those turf-heaps, mounds of potter’s clay, melted at the word of the soldiers like butter in the frying-pans of Friesland housewives.

A man so deserving, a soldier so courageous, a cavalier so gallant, a strategist so shrewd – is it a wonder that d’Artagnan was admired wherever he went and that his name would go down in the annals of history as one of the heroes of his age? He led the campaign in Holland with his usual skill and verve, and it was to nobody’s surprise that a letter arrived on a day in June.

 _Monsieur d’Artagnan,_ it read in the hand of M. Colbert. _The king commands me to inform you that he has nominated you Maréchal of France, as a reward for your magnificent services, and the honour you do to his arms. The king is highly pleased, monsieur, with the captures you have made; he commands you, in particular, to finish the siege you have commenced, with good fortune to you, and success for him._

Oh, how radiant the countenance was of that worthy soldier and the king’s most faithful, most loyal servant! How sparkling his eyes! How joyous the cries that spilled from his lips when he beheld the coffer that accompanied the letter and that held the fleur-de-lised baton, the insignia of his new office.

A whizz, a bang, the ear-splitting crash as a cannonball from the besieged city shot into the trench where the Maréchal of France stood with his attendants. The coffer slammed to the ground. D’Artagnan, struck in the chest by a ricocheting splitter, tumbled backward and dropped upon a sloping heap of earth. His gold-laced hat and his long cane flew off and rolled into the dirt, and his gilt cuffs turned Burgundy-red with blood. His fingers groped feebly for the baton among the splinters of the broken box.

A terrible cry broke from the group of officers who beheld their maréchal’s deathly pallor and blood-stained uniform. A faint smile crept upon his lips that moved in silent prayer as his fingers closed around the baton and clung to it, just like his soul clung to life. D’Artagnan was a Gascon: a man of strong constitution and even stronger spirit. Even as his soldiers tore at his doublet and shirt, a surgeon was called for to staunch the flow of blood, d’Artagnan lifted his eyes towards Heaven and muttered words that appeared to his companions cabalistic: “Athos, Porthos, farewell till we meet again! Aramis, adieu forever!” In the corners, shadows trembled and grew, as his eyes were already growing dimmer, losing the power to see the wonders of the world.

“He’ll live,” the surgeon pronounced with the stolid, phlegmatic confidence of a man who had seen all that is to see on a battlefield. The uniform removed, the wound bandaged, the maréchal rested in a bed that was as clean as could be reasonably expected on a campaign. The baton lay within the reach of his hand. The siege was over; a white flag flew at the crest of the principal bastion, the campaign – won. A smile appeared beneath the bushy moustache, still fierce and formidable despite being white as the wings of a dove. The hero of so many gallant exploits had escaped death once again, as if a supernatural force had torn him from Death’s own grip. As if a god had held his hand over him; as if a goddess had spread out her mantle to shield him from harm. Had a secret rite been performed above the infant d’Artagnan’s cradle? Had his mother’s miraculous balm, the secret of which had been given to her by a Bohemian, rendered his body indestructible, his person immortal?

Dusk fell, and with it came shadows. They crept into the corners of the sick chamber and swirled into the air like miasma. The convalescent officer smiled a serene smile, breathing lighter and lighter with each inhale as his wounds closed. He would live. He would return to Paris in triumph. He stood victorious where others had fallen. He-

He blinked. The shadows deepened. From the corner of his eye, he saw darkness solidify, grow, spread out its wings and rise, rise to the ceiling, spread like the mantle of a pagan goddess, like the wings of Discordia. Like the cloak of a musketeer.

“Hello, d’Artagnan.” A tall, dark figure. A white face and eyes like coals that burned in the pit of Hell. “Long time, no see.”

“Aramis!” A cry tore from the human’s throat. D’Artagnan lifted himself on his elbows and stared at the apparition by the foot of his bed. “No, it can’t be you…” he muttered. “Aramis is older than me, and you are… you must be his son…” He passed a hand over his fevered brow. “Are you the son of Aramis, monsieur?”

The apparition smiled. At least, d’Artagnan suspected it was a smile, because it showed its teeth. Dazzling and brilliant, like diamonds. Like shards of glass. Like steel blades dunked into blood.

“D’Artagnan,” the man spoke, and it was the soft, the gentle voice the Gascon had known forever. The smile deepened, and so did the shadows.

The man sat down on the edge of his bed, and d’Artagnan shivered. Cold radiated from him, the stale cold of a tomb. “Who are you?” he croaked. The man took his hand, and icy fingers of death dug into d’Artagnan’s heart.

“I am,” I smiled at the old friend of my Parisian years. “I am the Duke of Alameda. Don’t you know that?” The hand in mine twitched and I pressed his fingers. D’Artagnan glanced down and his eyes widened at the sight of the collet of the ring I wore on the ring-finger of my left hand. “I am Aramis.”

“Aramis is dead.”

“How right you are!” I laughed and leaned in, until I felt the intoxicating throb of his blood under his skin. “I died, d’Artagnan. More than once. It hurt, d’Artagnan, dying hurts. It hurt me, and it hurt Athos when he died, he told me so. You are lucky that you won’t have to experience that agony more than once, my friend.”

“Athos?” D’Artagnan clung to the one word in my speech that filled him with hope. “Where is he? Is he alive, too?”

“No, d’Artagnan, he is not,” I said softly. “He is dead, he died the ultimate death.” I pressed my hand to my breast, where the holy relic lay against my skin: the bone that I took from his hand when I crawled out of the tomb at Bragelonne.

“The ultimate-”

“Yes, d’Artagnan, the ultimate. He cannot be killed by the usual means, did you not know that? Surely, you must have suspected something, after all that you have seen.”

“What killed him?” he whispered with white lips.

“I did.”

“No. You didn’t. I was with him when he died, I know that you didn’t kill him.”

“You were with him?” My blood heaved. “What did he say? Tell me what he said!”

“ _I am strong against everything, d’Artagnan, except the death of those I love_ ,” d’Artagnan whispered. “ _They can’t die. They cannot die._ ”

“You see?” I smiled. “Athos never lied. He told you all you needed to know. We always told you all you needed to know.”

“You never told me this!” his anger was roused, his Gascon blood churned within his veins and propelled him up in the bed. My hand over his mouth, pressing him down, pressing him back into the pillows.

“I am telling you now.” I hovered above him. “I loved him,” I breathed against his skin. “And he loved me, with his heart, his soul… and his body. But he no longer does. His love died when he did. Lethe robbed him of it. And so you see… He is lost to me. All is lost.” My fangs grazed his skin and he stiffened beneath me as his blood surged into my mouth. “D’Artagnan… adieu forever!”

 

END OF VOLUME III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming in 2016: The Fabulous Adventures, Volume IV

**Author's Note:**

> You've all been so kind to share in what otherwise would have been our folie a deux! Please keep talking to us as we finish up Volume III. (Unbe-frickin'-lievable.)


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